500 words a day on whatever I want

Stephen Jay Gould on “The Bell Curve”

Disclaimer: I have not read “The Bell Curve” for myself. The following is based instead on Stephen Jay Gould’s take on it. As a professor of biology at Harvard he knows the science way better than I do – like some of the important stuff “The Bell Curve” left out. He wrote about it in the 1996 edition of “The Mismeasure of Man”.

“The Bell Curve” (1994) by Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray is suppose to give the science proving that blacks in America have less intelligence in general than whites – and always will because intelligence, as measured by IQ, is mostly inborn or genetic. Further, they say this lack of intelligence is why things like crime, unemployment and illegitimacy are so high among blacks – and why throwing tax money at them will make little difference. In short: warmed-over social Darwinism.

As it turns out, even if you go by their numbers, IQ is weakly correlated with illegitimacy and so on – the numbers match up badly. So badly, in fact, that when they draw the lines on their graphs to show the relationships, they leave out the dots, the scatter of data points the lines are based on!

Further, correlation is not cause. After all, there is a much stronger correlation between your age and the national debt and yet neither causes the other.

And even Herrnstein and Murray admit that IQ is only 60% genetic. So only somewhat over half of these weak correlations-which-are-not-even-causes have anything to do with the inborn intelligence of black people.

And it gets worse:

All this is based on only one set of data with the numbers worked a certain way. But there are other sets of numbers, which they overlook – but would not if they had a strong case. And there are other ways to work the numbers. In fact, you can even show that it is impossible to measure intelligence by a single number!

That is no small point: Their argument depends on expressing intelligence as a single number. Not all scientists agree you can. The authors admit as much but do not make it plain why anyone would say that, a point which would cast their whole book into doubt – and make it clear that there are other ways to read the numbers. By leaving this out you do not see how weak their case is.

Their argument also depends on assuming that IQ is largely genetic therefore unchangeable. Not true.

Just because something is genetic does not mean it is set in stone. Height seems to be even more genetic than intelligence yet it is heavily affected by what you eat growing up – as people from India who bring up their children in America discover.

The same with IQ: in some countries it has gone up more in the past 50 years than the difference between blacks and whites in America. There is even a name for it: the Flynn Effect.

It should also be pointed out that their work was never peer-reviewed, probably because of the obvious wholes it contains. This book was meant to be a political screed from the get-go, not science. It’s continued use by white supremacists 16 years after its racist implications were thoroughly debunked indicates that Murray and Herrnstien knew exactly what market they were aiming for when they wrote it.

I had to look twice before I saw it was published in 1994. At first I thought I saw 1894. I haven’t read it (and probably never will since pseudo-science annoys me) but it wouldn’t surprise me if it contained serious references to phrenology.

Apart from the sarcasm…
Quite a number of crimes actually require an incredible amount of imagination and intelligence to be pulled off. It sometimes makes me think, if the criminals had used their energy and enormous potential for something constructive they could have done a favour not only to themselves but to mankind as a whole.

I assume the authors would have a hard time to scientifically prove any one-sided correlation between intelligence and criminal energy had they studied a large enough sample of actual cases.

As for that 19th century ‘theory’ of genetic IQ and a correlation to ethnic background, we all know by now (mind you, this is 2010) that it’s bollocks.

I heard about this, and was aware that this was out during that time. However, it’s not surprising as whites make it a mission to “prove” that blacks are less than human. It’s also not surprising that they love to target blacks and not themselves.

First off I have read The Bell Curve, and it is very important to understand exactly what the authors are saying before we go to debunking it. Their case is in a nutshell, is that of all the life measures, IQ, the amount of “general intelligence” is the one that matters the most, and they then proceed to explain why. Simply put, so their argument goes, the smarter you are, the more likely you are to have a more productive, law abiding life; the reverse is true if your are not very bright.

The book only takes a look at racial issues in a very limited way; the majority of the book doesn’t mention race much at all. But yes, they do suggest that differences between Blacks and Whites on tests and the like can be due at least in part to inborn, genetic differences in intelligence. This, a section of the book that is actually quite small in comparison to the whole, is what has made the Bell Curve so infamous.

The bigger argument the book is making is that American society will be bifurcated along IQ lines – between the Cognitive Elite and those who were born on the left side of said curve – and what needs to happen in order to manage this cleaving of society. I think it is a complex and interesting book, even while i disagree with much of it, and would urge you to actually read it for yourself. After all, if we’re gonna debunk the HBD crowd, we need to be well-informed as to what their key sources say.

“The Bell Curve is a best-selling 1994 book by the late Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and American Enterprise Institute political scientist Charles Murray. Its central argument is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwanted pregnancy, and crime than parents’ socioeconomic status or education level. Also, the book argues that those with high intelligence, the “cognitive elite”, are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence and that this is a dangerous social trend. Most of the controversy concerns Chapters 13 and 14, in which the authors wrote about racial differences in intelligence and discuss the implications of those differences. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic, and they did indeed write in chapter 13: “It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences.” The introduction to the chapter more cautiously states, “The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved.”

It’s also not surprising that they love to target blacks and not themselves.

I don’t know about that Will. Ever hear of the Darwin Awards? But then again, it has become an international phenomenon. I guess this is probably due to the fact there is no ethnic/racial basis for intelligence.

http://www.darwinawards.com/
“Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.”

“Further, they say this lack of intelligence is why things like crime, unemployment and illegitimacy are so high among blacks – and why throwing tax money at them will make little difference. In short: warmed-over social Darwinism.”

I’ve observed three general schools of thought about the source of these social pathologies:

(1) Liberal/Left. Black social problems are due to racial discrimination and poverty.

(2) Hereditarian. Racial differences in crime, family breakdown, and economic success are due to genetic differences between blacks and whites.

(3) Social conservative. Black social problems result from defective cultural values relating to family and academics held by the underclass.

Most who comment on this blog appear to subscribe wholeheartedly to (1). A few (e.g. RR) favor (2). Personally, I think (3) is the most explanatory though (1) also has some merit. I would agree with Hernstein and Murray that throwing money at the problems won’t solve them, but not for the same reason.

I like the way Ben O’Donnell put it (I don’t know where he stands on the issue overall, but I like this quote):

“Race and IQ tests are two nebulous determinants of nebulous qualities”

Race is a social construct. Genetically, I probably have more in common with the white people around the corner than I do with someone in Uganda. IQ is an equally shaky concept. What exactly is intelligence anyway, and who says IQ measures whatever it is? What if it is many different things? Why only math and verbal? So for anyone to try to link these two things that are both impossible to nail down and to claim that it’s genetics and not environment and oppression that explain the differences is foolish. It’s just foolish. And racist, because why?

I’ll tell you one thing these race-IQ comparisons might be good for: it’s a quick way to tell who is oppressed in a given region and who has more relative power. Why do Koreans in Japan score so much lower on IQ tests? Oppression. Why do Catholics in Northern Ireland have the same 15 pt. IQ gap as blacks in North America? Oppression. In many cases we’re dealing with the same “racial groups”. Are Koreans in Japan of inferior genetic stock? Why do the Irish get smarter when they cross the Atlantic? Come on.

Race is more than merely a social construct, though of course it has profound social dimensions. But it is also biologically based, too. To deny this is to only to hamper one’s reasoning on the issue, and which inhibits us from properly engaging the scientific racists.

Satoshi Kanazawaa, an evolutionary psychologist who is a regular contributor at the Psychology Today website, has also gone on record as saying that criminals by and large, to have lower intelligence than those who don’t commit crime. He lays out the reasons why here:

If we are going to engage the scientific racists on the matter, we have to acknowledge some basic facts, and the facts are, that criminals tend to be less intelligent on average than non criminals. Here’s how I tackle the issue:

(Obviously, the opening paragraph of the review sets up the Bell Curve argument as a straw man!)

I read the Nisbett book impatiently, thinking, “Hasn’t someone already shown all of this?” Which of course, they have–Nisbett performs a review of all the scholarly literature for a popular audience, and others have included much of this research elsewhere, including in the more-popular Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

“Nearly all the research that Murray and Herrnstein relied on for their central claims about race and IQ was funded by the Pioneer Fund, described by the London Sunday Telegraph (3/12/89) as a “neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics.” The fund’s mission is to promote eugenics, a philosophy that maintains that “genetically unfit” individuals or races are a threat to society. “

Now, saying that there’s no race is NOT the same thing as saying that all human beings are biologically identical. The fact of the matter is, we’re too genetically DIVERSE to have races, not genetically identical.

Whether or not criminals are less intelligent is a completely different thing. But I would hazard a guess that the criminals who GET CAUGHT are probably less intelligent, yes.

Crime is a social concept. It has no necessary biological component. If you have no laws, you have no crime, QED. Furthermore, the U.S. criminal population has risen by 400% (or something like that) over the past few decades. Is that because the U.S. population is stupider? No: it’s because the U.S. is more of a police state today than it ever was before. Things which were once misdemeanors now get you jail time. This has nothing at all to do with biology.

Thad,
Have you read the link I provided by Prof. Kanazawaa? I think his piece is a good jumping off point for our discussion here.

As for the question of race, it has been found that certain medications work better or worse depending on the race of the patient. This I don’t find objectionable in the least, and I am at a loss as to why you would.

Ruth,
Actually, The Bell Curve was published by Adam Bellow, son of famed writer Saul Bellow, who is known in his own right for writing In Praise of Nepotism. But yes, the Pioneer Fund has indeed had a role to play in the scientific racism movement.

“As for the question of race, it has been found that certain medications work better or worse depending on the race of the patient. “

Actually, no they haven’t. They have found that effectiveness of some medications vary depending on the patient’s group, more specifically “black American” or “white American.” They have not provided any evidence that these same disparities apply to other “black” and “white” groups, and in fact some researchers have acknowledged that these social categorizations don’t tend to correspond with genetic predispositions (see info on the heart drug BiDil).

“Satoshi Kanazawaa, an evolutionary psychologist who is a regular contributor at the Psychology Today website, has also gone on record as saying that criminals by and large, to have lower intelligence than those who don’t commit crime. He lays out the reasons why here”:

Forgive me I did not read the link but I have to disagree.

In fact politicians are the biggest criminals and they seem to be getting away with their ‘criminality’ against a general populace that do not do crime, daily and across the world too.

I suspect its the other way as it suggests in the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

“Thus, sages rule by emptying people’s hearts (keep them ignorant), filling their bellies, weakening their ambitions, and strengthening their bones”

My point is simply that it doesn’t diminish our counter argument to simply acknowledge the biological differences that exist between Blacks, Whites and other groups. As I’ve pointed out in my linked article on my blog, we can focus on issues of real import when confronting scientific racists.

For example, let’s assume for the sake of argument that in aggregate, Black folks are more inclined to commit violent crimes than Whites and Asians.

OK.

The question then becomes: so what? What are we to do in light of this?

The scientific racists, like Levin for example, would suggest and favor increased racial profiling. Now, let’s be clear – racial profiling does indeed reduce crime, but at the expense of civil liberties, something that is enshrined in our very way of life as Americans. So, we would have to ask the scientific racists, if they are comfortable with essentially taking away your and my civil liberties, all in the name of curtailing Black Crime.

If they say yes, the next question would have to be, how they would make such a proposal work in a land where the individual is not only held as sacrosanct, but is protected from the abuses of the State.

See how this works?

The issue really isn’t the “science” but whether those who push such a thing wants to change puiblic policy to reflect said “science” – and if they do, how they propose to get around the very fundaments of our society.

“Fair enough, because one, I’m not a medical Man, and two, that really isn’t my point.

My point is simply that it doesn’t diminish our counter argument to simply acknowledge the biological differences that exist between Blacks, Whites and other groups.”

The first problem is this: who is black? Who is white? Those are socially defined and variable depending on the country or region, not to mention phenotype, so you can’t say that biological differences exist between these groups until we can nail who is what.

The second problem is this: who ever said that there were no biological differences between groups? It seems those who disagree with the idea of race as social construct assume that its proponents think there are no biological differences between groups (not “races,” but groups); that all humans are a homogeneous mass. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Natasha,
For me the issue is at best moot, because it doesn’t address the root issue, that of the scientific racists who want to change public policy. That to me is the real issue at hand, and if we keep trying to see how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we can’t really get to the real issues.

As for the question of race, it has been found that certain medications work better or worse depending on the race of the patient.

Actually, that’s not true. That’s based on ascribed race, not on genetics. And the same medications work equally well on anyone who has the same egentics complex.

Sorry, man. Fact. Genetics don’t come in a homogenous package.

Regarding illiteracy, since when is this correlated with intelligence? Stupid people read and smart people can’t read. Literacy is a LEARNED trait, not a genetically determined one.

Regarding Kanazawa, there are some HUGE epistemological holes in that fluff piece he wrote. Let’s look at some, OK?

We may infer this from the fact that behavior that would be classified as criminal if engaged in by humans, like murder, rape, assault, and theft, are quite common among other species.

What’s murder? If I kill soemoen, is that murder? If that’s the case, then a whole lot of people you and Kanazawa p´robably find laudable are murderers and by Kanazawa’s definition inferior, beginning with every Medal of Honor winner in the U.S.

Obviously, murder is not a fixed variable: it is sociologically determined and varies from society to society. It can thus have no necessary biological link, at least in the sense that Kanazawa gives it. A person who has a biology that makes himself or herself more likely to kill is only going to become a criminal if s/he kills people who society says s/he shouldn’t kill. As for women and murder… is abortion murder? Because if it is, a hell of a lot of women are now criminals and stupid, according to Kanazawa.

In short, SOCIETY decides what a crime is, not biology. So to presume that criminals are somehow biologically determined is foolish.

Secondly, what authorizes Kanazawa to presume that murder and crime are “evolutionary positive behaviors”? There is absolutely no proof of this in Darwinian theory. In fact, today’s evolutionists are much more likely to emphasize that it is humanity’s COOPERATIVE and SOCIAL nature which probablyu has pushed it along the track of evolution to the point where we have become, effectively, superorganic beings. It seems to me that our dear psycnhologist has a rather 19th century, social darwinistic “survival of the fittest” view of evolution which is not up today’s state of the art in the biological sciences.

Furthermore, have you notidec that Kanazawa’s “hypothesis” is tautological and is thus not a real hypothesis? He states that less intelligent people have greater difficulties in dealing with evolutionary novelties than more intelligent people. But how does he define “lesser intelligence”? Why, by classifying those who have succumbed to evolutionary pressures as ipso fato less intelligent.

Finally, Kanazawa, as I mentioned above, seems to have a VERY shaky notion of how evolution workd. Evolution occurs in VERY small – almost infintesimal – increments over millions of years. There is NO point in an individual’s existence – absent some very dramatic and extremely rare event – where evolutionary pressures are going to be felt, per se. Evolutionary pressures arent felt on an individual scale, but on the scale of mass popultations over multiple generations.

Why Kanazawa is blathering on about evolution in this fashion when he’s obviously not absored Darwin’s most basic lessons is beyond me, but his article would have a very difficult time passing through a peer review process.

Sorry, OF, but Kanazawa’s article is an excellent example of why pop science publications are not good authorities on any given topic.

(It should be noted, btw, that Kanazawa’s bio is less than stellar. He doesn’t seem to have published any scientific book, but only pop books. He’s a reader in management and his publishing record is one pop psych book after another. This guy isn’t writing as a scientist, OF, but as a pop essayist.)

You continue to surprise. I thought the whole “Bell Curve” issue was beyond the pale for you, and I was going to submit my own review, but here you have reintroduced it. I commend you (although you still didn’t read the book).

The following is an outright untruth. You wrote:

As it turns out, even if you go by their numbers, IQ is weakly correlated with illegitimacy and so on

The authors show that the probability of having a child out of wedlock decreases as IQ increases (see page 180 of “The Bell Curve” in Google books:

You are one of the few people who have posted on “The Bell Curve” who actually seems to have read and digested the book. Indeed, the discussion of race is a relatively small part of the book. From my perspective, “The Bell Curve” is probably THE most important book produced in the latter half of the 20th century. The implications of IQ differences just among whites is huge.

You wrote:

After all, if we’re gonna debunk the HBD crowd, we need to be well-informed as to what their key sources say.

Here, here! Finally someone who gets it! What are your specific objections to the book?

Race is more than merely a social construct, though of course it has profound social dimensions. But it is also biologically based, too. To deny this is to only to hamper one’s reasoning on the issue, and which inhibits us from properly engaging the scientific racists.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Those who continue to insist that race is wholly a social construct are as intellectually blind as those who insisted hundreds of years ago that the world was flat. We may not like the implications associated with race, but race denial isn’t going to get us anywhere. I thought you asserted yourself manfully in “The HBDers’ Black Crime Canard”

Most who comment on this blog appear to subscribe wholeheartedly to (1). A few (e.g. RR) favor (2).

Not true. What I have stated is that blacks, on average, commit more crime and are, on average, less intelligent than whites. I never said that blacks were genetically predisposed to crime or low intelligence.

Please concentrate on what race has become to be known scientifically NOW, i.e. a race is basically a very large extended family that inbreeds to some extent. Race is a continuum. IT IS NOT DISCRETE! Race is relative, like height.

The fact of the matter is, we’re too genetically DIVERSE to have races

This is ridiculous. Obviously, there are genetic similarities between groups of people. That is why forensic scientists are able to determine the degree of racial admixture, or lack thereof, from DNA samples with a high degree of probability.

The first problem is this: who is black? Who is white? Those are socially defined and variable depending on the country or region, not to mention phenotype, so you can’t say that biological differences exist between these groups until we can nail who is what.

The definitions of black and white aren’t exclusively socially defined. The definition, while often inadequate, is related to lineage (family). Of course DNA tests can give better quantitative indications of race, but visual inspection is still fairly accurate. Most Americans can determine whether a person is mostly black, mostly white or racially indeterminate.

The second problem is this: who ever said that there were no biological differences between groups? It seems those who disagree with the idea of race as social construct assume that its proponents think there are no biological differences between groups (not “races,” but groups)

If using the word “groups” instead of “race” makes you feel better, OK. I have no problem with that. The reality of race will still remain, regardless of what you call it. It will still be problematic because “groups” differ on a variety of measures, most problematically in the area of intelligence.

Please concentrate on what race has become to be known scientifically NOW, i.e. a race is basically a very large extended family that inbreeds to some extent. Race is a continuum. IT IS NOT DISCRETE! Race is relative, like height.

I am RR.

No, race is not “a large extended family”. No human group the size of “blacks” is anywhere nearly as genetically congruent as a family.

One COULD argue that there are indeed human groups that inbreed to a certain extent and this is true, but these groups are properly called “populations”: they have none of the characteristics which races are presumed to have, beginning with the fact that they are not anything like biologically stable and discrete subspecies.

I should mention that I’m pretty damned up-to-date on this topic and that you and OF seem to share the same basic problem. This problem can be resumed as a lack of basic understanding of biology and genetics which makes you think that “race” is the only term we can use to discuss human biodiversity.

For the both of you, “races” must exist or humanity must be 100% genetically the same. There is no middle ground.

This false dichotomy isn’t caused by my lack of understanding of modern science, folks: it’s caused by the fact that your understanding of biology is apparently stuck somewhere in the 1960s.

Yes, there are patterns to human populations’ biologies. No, these are not races.I suggest that the both of you look up “clinactic distribution of genetic traits” which is what biologists talk about when they discuss human biopatterning.

And to give you an example that touches on that “there are racially-based medicines” argument of yours OF, the makers of that medicine are quite clear that the “race” that they make it for is socio-historically defined. In other words, it only makes sense within a given society and historical background. Something like 1.5 billion people on this planet are “black”: not even the majority of these people have the set of genetic and cultural values which creates the heart disease syndrome that said medicine is created to cure.

I further remind you that race isn’t and never was a statistical construct: one doesn’t have a race because a certain population has a 10% more chance of this or that occuring than another population. Race means subspecies and it presumes a stable inbreeding population that is genetically demonstrates more congruency among its members than its members demonstrate when compared to the general species population.

We don’t have that in humans.

There are only two ways one can plausibly postulate that race exists among us.

The first is what RR and OF are doing: be ignorant about the biological and historical definition of race and deny what science has clearly demonstrated about human biodiversity.

The second is what many of the scientists that people like RR love to quote on race do: subtly rework the definition of race so that the word now stands for any observable patterning in human biology at any level. This is a purely semantical switch which only works because the vast majority of laymen are emotionally attached to the concept of “race” and feel threatened in their identities when someone like me says “it doesn’t exist as a biological construct”. It’s a scientifically dubious procedure because it ammounts to pouring new wine into very old, dirty and cracked bottles. In no other field of science would this be acceptable. No other field of science says “Hey, we have radical new findings which overturn all our previous considerations regarding a phenomenon, but let’s continue using the old and inadequate terminology anyhow because it makes people feel better.”

I would like to add another point to Natasha W’s. Where did they get all of this data.

I know I did not take what was called an IQ test in the fifties. The tests, they give in schools vary quite a bit and each does not cover the same assessments. When William Shockley came up with idea, I think who first coined the phrase “the bell curve,” most Black people lived in the south during Jim Crow. The assumption in all school systems that Black folk were inferior, so there were no test given to compare them to white students.

His ideas got traction because of his credentials as a physicist and Nobel Laureate. Not because his science was good. The average person is inclined to believe anyone who they feel can confirm their own prejudices and if a person has some celebrity or unrelated science background, it is good enough for them. In a climate that values anti-intellectualism, Ann Coulter revisiting
Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve has given those prejudices another supposedly valid voice.

Most times when the quacks come out, it only harms those individuals who buy that particular potion. This time it is calculated to harm large populations, so that a small minority can maintain supremacy.

When I saw the title I knew it would be someone like theobsidianfiles who claim to be dispassionate in their evaluation of The Bell Curve.

I am sure the Nazi guards were dispassionate as they marched their fellow humans being into the gas chambers.

RR,
Well, from what I understand of the book, TBC seems to layout a number of correctives that I find to be tenuous at best for a whole host of reasons. One of the more controversial was in the cutting off inducements ie welfare, off to Black or otherwise lower IQ Women so that they would have fewer babies. As it turns out, the Welfare Reform Act of the latter 1990s effectively addressed this issue.

But that aside, it still doesn’t address the other side of the question, which is WHY smart White Women DON’T have babies, or as many of them. I address the matters here:

In the meantime, as I’ve tried to explain to Thad, Natasha and a few others, the issue for me isn’t so much the “science” as much as it is “what do we do about it”? Science, be it well grounded or not, has little if any sway when it comes to how a society ought to be ran and ordered. The HBD crowd wants to reorder society based on HBD principles, running roughshod over Constitutional principles in the process, something that the vast majority of Americans find anathema. This is where the debate truly lies in my view, not in debates over what is or is not “science”.

Hathor,
Your mention of my name (actually my blog’s name) and Godwin’s Law in the same sentence, merely for my saying that those who deign to speak out against The Bell Curve should at the very least be familiar with its contents, is most unfortunate. Nowhere have I said that I have agreed with the book or its authors, I was merely attempting to handle the matter in a reasonable manner. I take exception to your attempt to shutdown worthy discussion and debate by appealing to lowest common demoninator tactics.

“Natasha,
For me the issue is at best moot, because it doesn’t address the root issue, that of the scientific racists who want to change public policy. That to me is the real issue at hand, and if we keep trying to see how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we can’t really get to the real issues.”

And how do you expect to address the “root issue”? What do you think could possibly be said that would satiate people hell bent on deeming millions of people inferior?

“In the meantime, as I’ve tried to explain to Thad, Natasha and a few others, the issue for me isn’t so much the “science” as much as it is “what do we do about it”? Science, be it well grounded or not, has little if any sway when it comes to how a society ought to be ran and ordered.”

And isn’t that a shame for a society that likes to consider science the end all and be all; the official word, and likes to consider themselves scientifically literate. But anyway, the science is very important because by looking at the methods used in many of the studies used to purport, it becomes fairly easy to poke holes in many of these arguments.

Did you think I was entering an argument? After 30 some years of hearing all of the arguments, there is really nothing new I could contribute and especially to someone who says “The issue really isn’t the “science”.”

How does something purport to be fact, if the science behind it can not substantiate it?

It is like arguing with someone who thinks 2 + 2 = 5 in the decimal system.

“The definitions of black and white aren’t exclusively socially defined. The definition, while often inadequate, is related to lineage (family). Of course DNA tests can give better quantitative indications of race, but visual inspection is still fairly accurate. Most Americans can determine whether a person is mostly black, mostly white or racially indeterminate.”

And who decided what constitutes white and what constitutes black (talk less of this “mostly” business)? Society, and a very small segment of it at that.

“If using the word “groups” instead of “race” makes you feel better, OK. I have no problem with that. The reality of race will still remain, regardless of what you call it.”

A race and a group or population are not the same and you can not equate them.

N: And how do you expect to address the “root issue”? What do you think could possibly be said that would satiate people hell bent on deeming millions of people inferior?

O: The root issue is simply this: scientific racists have always sought to use their “science” as a basis to change existing public policy, into that which they deem appropriate. However, our society is NOT based on science, legitimate or otherwise. Our society is based on a body of ideals, among them being the right to be judged, not as a group but as an individual. So, the notion that, for example, increased racial profiling is needed insofar as Black males are concerned, because it can be shown/proven that said males are more prone toward violent criminal acts – even if true – directly subverts the notion of civil liberties and abuses of the State against the individual, something which the Founding Fathers found abhorrent. In order to do what the scientific racists want to do, they would need in essence, to rewrite the Constitution, something that virtually all Americans would find unacceptable.

“In the meantime, as I’ve tried to explain to Thad, Natasha and a few others, the issue for me isn’t so much the “science” as much as it is “what do we do about it”? Science, be it well grounded or not, has little if any sway when it comes to how a society ought to be ran and ordered.”

N: And isn’t that a shame for a society that likes to consider science the end all and be all; the official word, and likes to consider themselves scientifically literate. But anyway, the science is very important because by looking at the methods used in many of the studies used to purport, it becomes fairly easy to poke holes in many of these arguments.

O: Whether we like it or not, Science is the civil religion of our time, and people will use it to justify their views one way or another. I am suggesting that the real focus however, is NOT science, but whether what these folks propose to do with their “findings”.

@OF
Professor K’s theories have been critiqued based on their intellectual worth, not based on whether or not I like the guy. The man’s a psychologist whose only publishing history (as far as I can see) in the field of evolutionary biology consists of pop science titles which were never peer reviewed. That’s a simple fact, OF, not an insult. Furthermore, the man makes the supreme error of believing that evolution works on individuals and not on populations. This is a basic error.

As J is often wont to remind me, a PhD doesn’t give you lisence to theoretize about everything. Dr. K might be a bang-up psychologist, but his musings on evolution have about as much validity as my musings on automobile mechanics.

In the meantime, as I’ve tried to explain to Thad, Natasha and a few others, the issue for me isn’t so much the “science” as much as it is “what do we do about it”? Science, be it well grounded or not, has little if any sway when it comes to how a society ought to be ran and ordered. The HBD crowd wants to reorder society based on HBD principles, running roughshod over Constitutional principles in the process, something that the vast majority of Americans find anathema. This is where the debate truly lies in my view, not in debates over what is or is not “science”.

Correct. But given the fact that science has as much if not more legitimacy in our society today as, say, religion, people will always be trying to harnass it for political purposes. That is what The Bell Curve attempts to do. As Gould points out, it’s our job as scientists to debunk these political bastardizations of the discipline.

That’s my job. I’m not a senator or a street activist: I’m a social scientist.

Btw, Obsidianfiles, I do agree with you that people SHOULD read the book before critiquing it.

That said – and different from RR’s claims – it presents no great or conclusive evidence for a race-I.Q.-biology connection. Note that RR is quick to point out the fact that “this is not the book’s premise” when someone critiques TBC as racist propaganda. This is odd, however, because that’s PRECISELY the way RR reads the book, isn’t it?

So if “blacks are genetically inferior” isn’t TBC’s premise (and to be fair the book only IMPLIES this rather than states it), all well and good.

But if that’s the case, then why do the Steve Sailors and Anne Coulters and RRs of the world constantly present TBC as if it DID prove that blacks were biologically superior?

If you’ll look at the history of my and RR’s argument about this book on this site, you’ll clearly see that RR started out arguing – several times in fact – that TBC “proved” blacks were biologically inferior. It was only after I had trashed that claim a couple of times that he started accusing be of being “ignorant” and “not having read the book” because “of course” The Bell Curve never makes the claim that blacks are inferior.

So I think we can say that, regardless of what the book says, it strongly implies that blacks are biologically inferior and – given that the book is universally used as if it were proof of that hypothesis by the aryanist right and given the fact that its authors, to my knowledge, have never spoken out against this use – I think we can logically conclude that giving popular support to the disgraced notion of racially based IQ was indeed one of the book’s objectives.

Natasha,
It matters because it exists. How does Abagond’s blog address the fact that millions of Whites still harbor racist views and attitudes? Will it change any minds, and if so, how do we know that? Yet I don’t see Abagond getting weak in the effort.

As for Brown, etc, it was because of the founding principles of this society that they were able to be brought about, not in spite of them. None of that has anything to do with science.

With all due respect Natasha, I really don’t see the point in going back and forth over this issue. The reality is that the scientific racists exist, and our pissing contest will not do anything to address them. It is my view that our time is better spent actually addressing their public polciy arguments, rather than attempting to argue them down as to the nature of their “science” -in the end, that won’t matter anyway. Gould died trying to debunk it. The scientifc racists are still around.

Thad,
Please note that the scientific racists have not abated in their numbers, nor in their views, for more than a century. Please also note that The Bell Curve has sold incredibly well for a book of its length and dense academic prose/presentation. That tells me that your “mission”, such that it is, is a Fool’s Errand – such things persists, because a sizable portion of the American populace WANTS THEM TO.

So, let’s say that TBC is indeed a racist book? So? Haven’t you ever seen a racist book before? So what? That isn’t the issue, after all, the First Amendment protects the right of others to publish and read what some would consider racist content.

The issue is, WHAT POINT DO THOSE WITH THESE VIEWS WANT TO MAKE? If their point is to merely note that Blacks are intellectually inferior to Whites, fine. If there are people who wish to believe this, that’s on them.

If, on the other hand, these people wish to take their “evidence” to make the case that public policy should be altered or changed, THEN we have a problem, for the reasons I’ve outlined above here and over at my own blog. Please review the links I have provided to previous articles written by me on the matter.

It is important we understand what the real issues are and how to address them.

theobsidianfiles,
Because I reply to your comments does not mean that I am engaged in an argument. I have no desire to convince you of anything. I read so I know who my enemy is and how they think.
I will not be lulled by that dispassionate and pseudo rational crap.

“It matters because it exists. How does Abagond’s blog address the fact that millions of Whites still harbor racist views and attitudes? Will it change any minds, and if so, how do we know that?”

I comment on this blog because it has interesting topics, but I’m not under the impression that it will change many minds because I don’t think racism is based on reason or evidence.

“As for Brown, etc, it was because of the founding principles of this society that they were able to be brought about, not in spite of them. None of that has anything to do with science.”

You brought the topic up; I never said it had anything to do with science. But again: society is based on individuality on paper. You know and I know that people are viewed as groups in this country in practice, or else this post wouldn’t be necessary.

“With all due respect Natasha, I really don’t see the point in going back and forth over this issue. The reality is that the scientific racists exist, and our pissing contest will not do anything to address them. It is my view that our time is better spent actually addressing their public polciy arguments, rather than attempting to argue them down as to the nature of their “science” -in the end, that won’t matter anyway.”

This is not a pissing contest, it is a discussion. If you consider defending your arguments a burden, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot by making them.

You can not begin to debunk a claim unless you understand what it is founded upon (isn’t that what you were saying earlier?). Since their claims are based on “science” that is exactly what needs to be addressed. Or do you think you can knock down these arguments superficially?

What you have done so far is to present all of the scientific racists’ arguments. You have not refuted them. So I fail to see how your attempts are curtailing racist discussions much less racist policies.

Hathor,
You have no idea what I think, and I would urge you to take a few minutes to peruse my blogsite. I am no apologist for the scientific racists, indeed i vociferously oppose them. I just do so on grounds that actually matter, such as in the public polocy realm.

N: I comment on this blog because it has interesting topics, but I’m not under the impression that it will change many minds because I don’t think racism is based on reason or evidence.

O: So why do you then impose such a standard on me?

N: You brought the topic up; I never said it had anything to do with science. But again: society is based on individuality on paper. You know and I know that people are viewed as groups in this country in practice, or else this post wouldn’t be necessary.

O: That’s not true; otherwise, Jim Crow would still be the law of the land, and racial profiling would never get a mention in the public discourse, let alone the legal one.

N: This is not a pissing contest, it is a discussion. If you consider defending your arguments a burden, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot by making them.

O: It is if we keep getting bogged down in stuff neither of us really has all that much of an interest in to begin with – I mean really, do you have a great interest in whether Black folks are intellectually inferior to Whites or not? I don’t – I’m interested in how these people want to use their “evidence” to craft public policy, which has far more grave implications.

N: You can not begin to debunk a claim unless you understand what it is founded upon (isn’t that what you were saying earlier?). Since their claims are based on “science” that is exactly what needs to be addressed. Or do you think you can knock down these arguments superficially?

O: What I was saying earlier, to Abagond, was that it would be helpful to understand what The Bell Curve was all about before attempting to trash it. Their, meaning, the scientific racists, arguments may be based on “science” but it is clear what their intent is – to change public policy. It is on this front that we can successfully debunk them, because, even if they’re right, in the eyes of the American legal system, such public policy prescriptions based on HBD is anathema to everything America holds dear.

N: What you have done so far is to present all of the scientific racists’ arguments. You have not refuted them. So I fail to see how your attempts are curtailing racist discussions much less racist policies.

O: Please see my linked articles back to my blog upthread, they will make my position quite clear. Merely attempting to accurately layout the opposition’s arguments and claims does not mean that I agree with same.

I never imposed a standard on you — you imposed one on yourself by saying these blogs post “matter.” I simply asked how you were going to address the issue, and then how you thought blog discussions would affect these issues.

“That’s not true; otherwise, Jim Crow would still be the law of the land, and racial profiling would never get a mention in the public discourse, let alone the legal one.”

Mkay, obsidian. If you want to believe people are treated as individuals in American society (why does racial profiling exist in the first place?), then go right ahead. Everyone else will be waiting for you in reality.

“Please see my linked articles back to my blog upthread, they will make my position quite clear. Merely attempting to accurately layout the opposition’s arguments and claims does not mean that I agree with same.”

I don’t know if you agree with the claims, but you haven’t said anything on this post (I haven’t read the articles and, to be honest, I probably won’t be reading them) to repudiate them.

N: I never imposed a standard on you — you imposed one on yourself by saying these blogs post “matter.” I simply asked how you were going to address the issue, and then how you thought blog discussions would affect these issues.

O: These blog posts do matter to the extent that they serve as a record of those like us two who oppose the scientific racists online.

“That’s not true; otherwise, Jim Crow would still be the law of the land, and racial profiling would never get a mention in the public discourse, let alone the legal one.”

N: Mkay, obsidian. If you want to believe people are treated as individuals in American society (why does racial profiling exist in the first place?), then go right ahead. Everyone else will be waiting for you in reality.

O: Look, this isn’t a matter of theory for me, Natasha. I know about these issues firsthand, perhaps in ways you do not. And I am telling you that racial profiling is NOT the law of the land, otherwise we wouldn’t have the various legal protections we do. That’s not some crass jingoism on my part, just noting some basic facts.

“Please see my linked articles back to my blog upthread, they will make my position quite clear. Merely attempting to accurately layout the opposition’s arguments and claims does not mean that I agree with same.”

N: I don’t know if you agree with the claims, but you haven’t said anything on this post (I haven’t read the articles and, to be honest, I probably won’t be reading them) to repudiate them.

O: Then not only haven’t you been reading closely enough my own words in this thread, but your unwillingness to take a few minutes and a click or two lout of your day to find out exactly what my views are in this regard, says a heck of a lot more about you than it does about me.

But then, I was the one saying that it is important to actually know what you;re talking about before you attempt to address it.

“Look, this isn’t a matter of theory for me, Natasha. I know about these issues firsthand, perhaps in ways you do not. And I am telling you that racial profiling is NOT the law of the land, otherwise we wouldn’t have the various legal protections we do. That’s not some crass jingoism on my part, just noting some basic facts.”

Very presumptuous of you to think I don’t have firsthand experience. I come from a city where raical profiling by police is well-documented and is indeed the de facto law of the land.

“Then not only haven’t you been reading closely enough my own words in this thread, but your unwillingness to take a few minutes and a click or two lout of your day to find out exactly what my views are in this regard, says a heck of a lot more about you than it does about me.

But then, I was the one saying that it is important to actually know what you;re talking about before you attempt to address it.”

Uh, please. Save it. I have no use for your “articles” and your arrogance and personal attacks are not persuasive. You can keep directing commenters to read your “articles” or you can present some arguments here. Seeing as you choose to do the former, I guess this discussion is over.

@ObsidianPlease note that the scientific racists have not abated in their numbers, nor in their views, for more than a century.

Actually, they’ve abated in numbers in academia. Why do you think The Bell Curve couldn’t get past a peer review?

That tells me that your “mission”, such that it is, is a Fool’s Errand – such things persists, because a sizable portion of the American populace WANTS THEM TO.

Of course the masses want them to. Black and white, if this site is anything to go by. Nevertheless, I think Gould is right: there’s a need to constantly debunk this crap and there’s a BIG difference between racism as, essentially, a gutter theory and racism as something that’s taught as scientifically valid in classrooms.

As someone who has engaged with the policy process on several levels, Obsidian, yes, it does indeed make a difference whether crap like this gets challenged or not. In and of itself, it is not the key difference, no. But it is MUCH easier to argue policy when you can convince the majority that you have science behind you.

N: Very presumptuous of you to think I don’t have firsthand experience. I come from a city where raical profiling by police is well-documented and is indeed the de facto law of the land.

O: Unless you know what it’s like to be damn near shot by the police because YOU were racially profiled, it becomes kinda hard to really engage you meaningfully. With all due respect.

“Then not only haven’t you been reading closely enough my own words in this thread, but your unwillingness to take a few minutes and a click or two lout of your day to find out exactly what my views are in this regard, says a heck of a lot more about you than it does about me.

But then, I was the one saying that it is important to actually know what you;re talking about before you attempt to address it.”

N: Uh, please. Save it. I have no use for your “articles” and your arrogance and personal attacks are not persuasive. You can keep directing commenters to read your “articles” or you can present some arguments here. Seeing as you choose to do the former, I guess this discussion is over.

T: Actually, they’ve abated in numbers in academia. Why do you think The Bell Curve couldn’t get past a peer review?

O: I don’t know, but then again I never made any such claim; what I said was that the book sold extremely well given the nature of the topic and its presentation. Do you deny this, and if so, on what basis?

O: That tells me that your “mission”, such that it is, is a Fool’s Errand – such things persists, because a sizable portion of the American populace WANTS THEM TO.

T: Of course the masses want them to. Black and white, if this site is anything to go by. Nevertheless, I think Gould is right: there’s a need to constantly debunk this crap and there’s a BIG difference between racism as, essentially, a gutter theory and racism as something that’s taught as scientifically valid in classrooms.

O: Gould is now dead and in his wake there has sprouted an entire sector of the Internet that is devoted to the very concerns he sought to fight against. That does not sound like much of a victory to me.

T: As someone who has engaged with the policy process on several levels, Obsidian, yes, it does indeed make a difference whether crap like this gets challenged or not. In and of itself, it is not the key difference, no. But it is MUCH easier to argue policy when you can convince the majority that you have science behind you.

O: I would be very interested in hearing to what extent you were invovled in said public policy issues that directly involved HBD. Please share?

“Unless you know what it’s like to be damn near shot by the police because YOU were racially profiled, it becomes kinda hard to really engage you meaningfully. With all due respect. “

…Are you reading how foolish you sound? So a person needs to be nearly shot by the police in order to understand that racial profiling is a reality? You can’t be serious. You just can’t be. This is an only a desparate attempt to get the last word in a discussion where your claims clearly have no basis.

Anyway, I see your true colors coming out slowly — you don’t wish to engage anyone in discussion. You simply want to talk at people and throw whatever clout you think you have around. I’m embarassed I thought for even a few minutes you were genuine. Hathor seems to be right on in her assessment of you.

N: …Are you reading how foolish you sound? So a person needs to be nearly shot by the police in order to understand that racial profiling is a reality? You can’t be serious. You just can’t be. This is an only a desparate attempt to get the last word in a discussion where your claims clearly have no basis.

O: Wait, I thought we agreed that our discussion is over – so I must ask, are YOU serious? And yes, I find that often, personal experience trumps theoretical claptrap. And no, I don’t need to get the last word on you, of all people, LOL.

N: Anyway, I see your true colors coming out slowly — you don’t wish to engage anyone in discussion. You simply want to talk at people and throw whatever clout you think you have around. I’m embarassed I thought for even a few minutes you were genuine. Hathor seems to be right on in her assessment of you.

O: Wait, this coming from someone who refuses to even read the TWO, count em, TWO, articles I linked to in this thread? But you can “see” my “true colors”, right?

This is crazy!!! the only reason those silly guys wrote that book is that they believe in DARWINISM period. What, I believe was a REAL bell curve, is ‘top forty music’ in my opinion. It seemed that Rock n Roll started in the late forties and died in the late 80s. The APEX’ was Woodstock in 1969 (those were the days) kids today even like Hendrix, etc. If you listen to modern music, it sounds kinda like the 80s in many ways, it never left the 80s, only technically ‘digital sound’. I wish they start teaching evolution as a ‘theory’ instead of fact. Another thing: most black people that believe in Education, make it very stressful and hard. Ive seen black women overstressed because the guy isnt with her, and the ‘homies, and when the guys are older, put it down, not knowing that they could have the brains to be engineers, etc. instead of being stoopid.

Families are not “genetically congruent”. This is a ridiculous assertion on your part. No humans, outside of identical twins, are genetically congruent. Families do share certain genetic markers. In this sense, we are all part of the human family. We are characterized as humans because we have morphological, genotypic, phenotypic and genetic similarities that distinguish us from other animals, like our next closest animal relative, the Chimpanzee. Again, we are back to the question of relativism. All humans are related. Some humans are more related to each other than they are to other groups of humans. Members of a given nuclear family are more related to each other than they are to non-nuclear extended family members. The nuclear family members in question are still more related to their first rank extended family members (nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, 1st cousins) than 2nd rank members (grand nieces, grand nephews, great aunts, great uncles, 2nd cousins). The degree of relatedness keeps expanding in concentric circles, becoming weaker as the outer circle enlarges. Thus we can have groups like the Ibo, who share certain genetic markers through their lineages, being genetically distinct from Icelanders, who are the most inbred group on the planet.

If you wish to categorize people in terms of groups instead of using the dreaded racial classification, that’s fine. As I explained to Natasha W, it really doesn’t matter what you call the extended family in question, it will still mean the same thing. We will still be left with the problem associated with group/population differences. Instead of making statements like “Blacks differ from whites on X standard of measure” we can say things like “People of West African descent differ from people of Northern European descent on X standard of measure”. The differences are what people will focus on, not the nomenclature.

You wrote:

I should mention that I’m pretty damned up-to-date on this topic and that you and OF seem to share the same basic problem.

No, you really aren’t current regarding racial classification. To begin with, racial classification has always been an evolving process. There has never been a clear working definition of race, although we have come a long way from late 19th century strictures which you insist on clinging to. This wikipedia entry,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_definitions_of_race#Genetics_and_Medicine, sums things up nicely:

Definitions of race have varied across cultures and over time, and have been controversial for social, political and scientific reasons. Until the 19th century, race was thought by many to constitute an immutable and distinct type or species which shared particular racial characteristics, such as body constitution, temperament and mental capacities.

You keep arguing against 19th century notions of race. Your argument is out of date. Not even your favorite whipping boy, Philipe J. Rushton argues this. Sailer’s definition of race, i.e. a race is a extremely extended family that inbreeds to some extent, seems to square with what we currently know about race.

subtly rework the definition of race so that the word now stands for any observable patterning in human biology at any level.

The definition was not subtly reworked. It was openly changed. The definition changed with advances in genetics and forensics. We now know much more about gene flow and heritability than we did in the 19th century.

No other field of science says “Hey, we have radical new findings which overturn all our previous considerations regarding a phenomenon, but let’s continue using the old and inadequate terminology anyhow because it makes people feel better.”

You are obviously not familiar with many other fields of scientific endeavor. The once common belief that the world was flat was tossed on the trash heap of scientific history. The Ptolemaic view of a geocentric universe was tossed in favor of the Copernican heliocentric view of our solar system. Blood-letting has faded in popularity due to the advance of science as has the notion that swamp gas causes malaria. Science marches on, sometimes dramatically so. Please update your arguments.

If you’ll look at the history of my and RR’s argument about this book on this site, you’ll clearly see that RR started out arguing – several times in fact – that TBC “proved” blacks were biologically inferior.

This is a complete and outright lie. I defy to to cite even one reference where I stated that “The Bell Curve” proved that black were biologically inferior! You are a liar and a hypocrite.

Why do you think The Bell Curve couldn’t get past a peer review?

The book was never submitted for peer review. It was a book written for laymen, which you would know IF YOU HAD READ THE BOOK. Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man” wasn’t subject to peer review either.

William Shockley did not come up with the Gaussian curve nor did he originate the notions relating to intelligence that were in evidence during his time.

J wrote:

So would you like to offer an explanation why ‘blacks, on average, commit more crime and are, on average, less intelligent than whites’.

I think our outsized level of crime is due significantly to culture. Remember, we didn’t always have a 70% illegitimacy rate. There is undoubtedly a significant genetic component that predisposes us to impulsive behavior. At this point, I would say we face more cultural headwinds in reducing our crime rate. I would offer a similar explanation regarding intelligence. It is a mixture of both nature and nurture. We may not be able to narrow the IQ gap significantly in our lifetimes. I do know that we can do better academically and financially, regardless of our average level of intelligence. The first and easiest step is to encourage our legislators to pass an indefinite immigration moratorium.

It is debatable as to whether the 1996 Welfare Reform Act resulted in an overall decrease in the number of illegitimate births and by extension, births to low IQ women. On the whole, welfare reform was not catastrophic for poor women and it did save money. It is hard to say whether the Murray/Herrnstein solution, i.e. the cutting off of ALL benefits to unwed mothers, would have made more of a difference in lowering the illegitimacy rate.

As you point out in your thread, the birth dearth problem among smart white women has been discussed at considerable lengths among HBDers and “others”. I have to admit to being sympathetic to the problem, although for entirely selfish reasons. I believe the following:

1) WASPs, especially smart WASPs, must constitute a significant majority of the population in order to maintain our current standard of living here in the US. The relationship between Negro Americans and WASPs, while often tumultuous, will still be significantly better than those relationships we establish with non-WASPs, which is another reason why unrestricted immigration is a REALLY BAD IDEA.

2) Any nascent eugenics program adopted by WASPs will have spillover effects on blacks, hopefully resulting in smart black women having more children with smart black men. Of course, the old regression to the mean problem would no doubt be in effect, but I think we would be better off in this case wrt average IQ than we are currently.

Sailer has addressed the birth dearth problem in an essay entitled “Affordable Family Formation” —The Neglected Key To GOP’s Future. Places where really smart white people live are incredibly expensive, causing whites to either move to more family friendly places or causing them to limit the size of their families. I’ve have not encountered an HBDer who was in favor of furthering eugenic principles by manipulating federal and state law. They seem too busy fighting against dysgenic effects already embedded in law.

What I find disturbing regarding intelligence is that, at the extreme left and right had side of the curve, politics skew leftward. Moderately intelligent to mentally average people don’t seem to skew left or right, but very intelligent people have a tendency to engage vigorously in leftist politics. combine this with the tendency of the cognitive elite to isolate themselves from the rest of humanity and we have a very frightening. It is my fear that cognitive elitists will convince the lesser lights among them that race really is wholly a social construction and will be inclined to view average/low IQ as a character flaw.

race and a group or population are not the same and you can not equate them.

I guess it depends on what one means by group. From my perspective, it is all relative. There exist ethnic groups that do not constitute a race, but nonetheless share genetic markers and cultural interests. The distinctiveness of a group on phenotypical, morphological and genetical basis would determine whether a population/group constitutes a race. And note, the terms population, group and race are not mutually exclusive. Again, it’s all relative.

RR,
The biggest problem with the smart White folks, such as they are, isn’t the problem of finding affordable places to live, but rather, how to convince smart White females in their peak fertility years, to mate with Jeremy the Dork from the college campus engineering department. American Women love the idea of being able to choose their own mates, and simply put, they don’t find Jeremy hot. They tend to choose guys from the Humanities and Business/Law schools more interesting.

So, I have proposed a program that will ensure that there will be the kinds of smart White folk in America for decades to come. Here it is:

“The USA gov’t, at the same time it crackdown on NAMs, also offers the following to any Bright White Female who applies to an Ivy League or otherwise topflight Big State School:

Take the gov’t sanctioned and mandated IQ Test; if said BWF scores 120 or higher, she is automatically granted to the Ivy League or Big State School of her choice, all expenses paid, from undergrad all the way through PhD-with the provision that she will agree to mate with the Male students the school will have selected and birth no less than three babies, *before the age of 30*, to ensure the babies’ good health and genetic heritage.

As noted above, the Baby Daddies will be selected for the BWFs, on the basis of, first and foremost, their IQ scores. So, Rachel, let’s say, will be introduced shortly after the first quarter of her semester at university-Jeremy, from the Astrophysics Dept. They’ll meet at one of the state-sponsored, on-campus socials, designed for the specific purpose of bringing couples together. Jeremy will have already been screened to ensure that he comes from a similar familial and social background like Rachel, and the Guidance/Admissions Officers will run the point in doing this kind of on-campus matchmaking. Rachel will be expected to take a liking to Jeremy, and to begin setting about the business of bringing on the next Bright White Generation. Come semester’s end, the Deans and Trustees fully expect to hear a happy report of Rachel and Jeremy expecting their *first* child.

Of course, the school will cover all medical, pre and postpartum expenses, plus daycare, which will be on-site. Relationship counselors will be available, and of course the happy couple will be mandated to check in with them for the duration they’re at school. And of course, we fully expect the happy couple to marry before they leave school as well.

If any of this sounds too far-fetched to be real, I have two words for you in response: Yao Ming. You all know him, right? One of the stars of the NBA, Ming is the product of a state-sponsored Eugenics program of the Chinese gov’t. His mother and father were the captains of their respective national basketball teams, and the Party Bosses made sure they got together in a very close way-shortly thereafter, not-so-little Yao was born.

As for Black folk, I was just talking about this with some frieds, and was wondering if there are any dating services extant for the HBCUs, and what their success rate was for getting Black Men and Women who had matriculated together and married, etc, how long they remained married, etc. It’s something I’m very interested in studying and would appreciate anyone out there who may have information to share in this regard.

RR,
Neither did I say that. You were reading another blogger who ref what I said to the Gaussian Curve. I said I think he coined the term the “Bell Curve” I did not say that Schockley originated the idea, he popularized it in the media.

You would know what I said if you had not tried to read in ignorance in my comment.

The thing is when you ask one question it opeens a number of issues/questions:

Here is a few thing that hit me asI read your post.

1. With regard to ‘illegitimacy’, is there any reason you do not see it merely as a socioligical change in the structure of the family, ie like polygamy to monogamy across the world, rather than a ‘deviant’ behaviour?

2. With regards to gene/s and ‘impulsive behaviour’? Would you like to elaborate here??

3. If intelligence is both an admixture of nature/nuture, would you like to break it down to percentages, in your own opinion ie 80% nature, 20% nurture, or vice versa etc??

Illegitimacy is definitely a sociological change in the family. Unlike the structural change many societies experienced when monogamy largely replaced polygamy, we are moving toward a less stable familial structure. With increasing illegitimacy, children are less well cared for and are more vulnerable to male predation, especially female children. It is a structure in which both males and females are allowed to be sexually careless, which makes things worse for everyone. If indeed we are more impulsive than other groups due to our higher level of standing testosterone or the increased number of testosterone receptors, increased levels of illegitimacy will continue to be a disaster for us. It is a disaster for whites also, as Murray and Herrnstein argue in the book, but is taking longer perhaps because whites are somewhat less impulsive than we are.

I will not hazard a guess as to the percentages attributed to genes and environment in shaping intelligence.

As long as the ‘extended communities’ are present and functional it need not end up as ‘less stable’ asyou imply…or do you think I am barking up the wrong tree??

Bearing in mind that the whole issue of single-parents cannot be divorced from what occurs in society, and womens’ issues.

So in other words as the family structure changes there needs to be a (positive) corresponding shift to accomadate this. However, society cannot obviously be seen to supporting any change and herin lies the contradiction.

Hope this makes some sense??

Anyhow and more importantly what are your thoughts, and how does this impact on intelligence, if at all??

I have to take strong issue with your assertion that smart white women are unwilling to mate with dorky white guys. Aside from the fact that their are lots of dorky white women around who don’t attract the more masculine, but less nerdy types of guys, dorky white guys get a considerable amount of play from Asian women. Then there is the age consideration. Smart white women generally postpone marriage and child-bearing until their late twenties. By that time, they are looking for stable intelligent guys. So dorks, so long as they stay in the game until their late twenties or early thirties, win! Smart white guys get theirs. The problem as Sailer has described it comes down to being able to afford a family. If a white or white/Asian couple live in a major city, they will be loathe to send their children to the local public school, assuming they were able to come up with a down payment on an apartment in the city. They would have to come up with tuition money, which is not tax deductible.

To sum up, smart white women don’t have to be bribed into mating with smart white men. Competition from Asian women is enough to sober many white women up. They may need to be bribed into bearing children though. Children are expensive.

Dating services for HBCUs. Ha! With sex ratios so incredibly skewed in favor of men? Fat chance of that. Perhaps at same-sex schools like Spellman and Morehouse, that might work, but probably not. They are both in Atlanta (Black Man’s Wish). Enterprising young marriage minded black women would be well advised to stay away from HBCUs. For black men though, it’s party time…at least until graduation.

RR,
No, with all due respect you are changing the goalposts. We know that fertility in females begins to decline after say age 26 or so; we also know that in order for the smart White folks’ demographic future to be assured, said Women will need to pump out at least two kids apiece, and the earlier the better. Moreover, Women like living in places like NYC and LA. For most guys, its a take it or leave it kind of thing. Men go where the Women are, and the truth of the matter is, that Women like living in these places, NOT heartland America. So, again, Sailer’s argument is kinda moot.

The argument is in how to get smart WHITE Women to have babies and have em early, with Jeremy from the Engineering Dept. To date I haven’t seen anyone on your side of things seriously addressing this issue, hence my plan to save the Smart White People.

A bettter idea would be to make more efficient use of black middle and upper middle-class groups like Jack & Jill. It would be interesting to know how many former Jack & Jill members marry. After lascivious rounds at HBCUs, male former Jack & Jillers might come to appreciate the sweet young things they met in Jack & Jill, assuming those sweet young things haven’t already married white guys.

RR,
Yes, the ratio insofar as available Black Women to Men wrt college life is quite skewed, but still, middle class Black folks manage to marry, which tells me that it is not entirely impossible. Again, I don’t know for certain whether the HBCUs have dating services for its students and alumni, but it is an interesting thing to contemplate.

On a sidenote, and I don’t know if Abagond has addressed this or not, but the idea of assortative mating isn’t a helpful strategy for Black Women in my view. What do you think about this?

With all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong. At age 26, a smart white woman has already figured out that the sexual odds are turning against her. If she is really smart, and hasn’t completely bought into a lot of feminist mumbo-jumbo, she is thinking strategically. She is thinking “Must find husband…stable…dependable…husband…for…procreation”. Smart 26-30 yo white women outnumber smart 26-30 yo white men. Dorky white men in this age group, assuming they are employed, have the whip hand. Especially in places like NYC or LA. Women like living in places like NYC UNTIL they get married. Then they think “Must have baby…must move to area with good school system and nice parks”. Sailer’s argument is anything but moot.

Of course middle-class black people marry. It is just an inherently dicer proposition, for blacks, mainly because of all the loose booty around….especially in Atlanta!

Assortive mating is a useful strategy for women regardless of race. A non-hypergamous marriage is less stable than a traditional hypergamous marriage. It is tougher for black women because they have to sober up and start thinking strategically at a much earlier age than white women do.

@OFI don’t know, but then again I never made any such claim; what I said was that the book sold extremely well given the nature of the topic and its presentation. Do you deny this, and if so, on what basis?

EXTREMELY well? As well as, say, any fiction best seller? First of all, the book sold only relatively well – relatively well for a supposed science text. Secondly, a lot was made out of the book by the mass media. Many people who bought it – including myself – did it out of curiosity. Its sales do not necessarily represent mass acceptance of its theories.

Gould is now dead and in his wake there has sprouted an entire sector of the Internet that is devoted to the very concerns he sought to fight against. That does not sound like much of a victory to me.

So let me get this straight: you believe some sort of ultimate victory is EVER going to be won on this issue? That’s not how this sort of thing goes, OF, as Gould himself recognized. Biodeterminism is too powerful a political tool for it to be abandoned. All that can be done is to debunk it. Now, I’m certainly no Gould, but today there are hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people like me in the sciences. When “The Mismeasure of Man” first came out, that wasn’t the case. We exist because Gould di what he did and I intend to carry on that legacy, in my own small way.

Knowing the history of biodeterminism, I’m not naive enough to believe it will ever be completely buried. Not when even so-called black ‘afrocentric” scholars like our pal J are only too willing to bring the beast back from the grave because they fool themselves into thinking that they can ride it.

I would be very interested in hearing to what extent you were invovled in said public policy issues that directly involved HBD. Please share?

Did I say HBD? I said policy issues that revolve around questions of biodeterminism. First of all, I live in Brazil. The policy issues I deal with are specific to this nation. I know that’s hard for Americans to imagine, but we aren’t an illusion done with smoke and mirrors by the Disney corporation.

RR,
Quick, where are the hottest, smartest White Women living? In St. Louis or Canton, or in NYC or LA? I think we both know the answer.

I’m sure you’ve read what I wrote about Yao Ming. What I am proposing can be done, and since White Women tend to have more delicate fertility than do Black Women on average, they really can’t afford to wait until their latter 20s-early 30s. They need to be having babies below the 25 year old threshold, probably closer to their early 20s. Again, my proposal to save the Smart White Males definitely addresses all this, in very practical terms.

As for Black folks of college educated rank, again, I would be very interested in seeing as to whether any such dating services insofar as the HBCUs is concerned, is something I would very much like to know more about. After all, the college campus is the de factor mating ground for many young people. That’s simply a fact of life.

First of all, I’m far from being an expert in genetics but the way I think it can be understood is by using a metaphor with simple maths.

Assuming a sequence of natural numbers 1,2,3,4,5…, etc. We all know that there are odd and even numbers. Then there are primes, ie. divisible only by one or by themselves; 2,3,5,7,11 etc… Furthermore we could define as sub-groups all numbers that begin with 1 (1,10,100), 2 (2,20,200) etc. (Just as an example.)

Now you could arbitrarily determine that these groups of numbers are distinct “races”, simply ignoring and discarding the inherent characteristics of each individual member. In other words, just leave it as that since virtually everybody is able to understand it. Then build questionable theories – or even dogmata – around it to counteract any further thinking or questioning.

HOWEVER, this can’t be any further from reality.

Bringing the math example a bit closer to reality, take the number 12. It is divisible by 2,3,4 and 6. Then take number 14. It is higher than 12 but divisible only by 2 and 7. (It is assumed that every natural number is also divisible by 1 and by itself.) Both are even numbers but their inherent characteristics are quite different.
Then look at number 28. It is divisible by 2,4,7 and 14. If we were to make a more significant grouping than in the beginning we would conclude that 28 shares characteristics of both 12 and 14 but much less so of number 10 for instance although it’s also an even number.

Now take the numbers 9 and 12. Both are divisible by 3 although 9 is odd and 12 is even. Or 14 and 21. Both are divisible by 7, but 21 is odd, 14 even. 21 can also be divided by 3 which would fit into the group with number 12.

Looking at the primes, number 5 is a prime but it can be used as a divisor for 10,15,25 and 150 for instance so it also fits into any of those groups.

Once again, it’s a very simple metaphor but I reckon it’s a quite strong one since the genetic code is many million times more complex than this. The inherent criteria you can take to group humans together are therefore arbitrary.

Picking up my own example I made in an earlier thread, nothing prevents me from arbitrarily determining that all humans around the world who have hazel eyes, black hair, a predisposition to heart disease and who are precisely 6 foot tall are a “race”. It depends very much on how you WANT to look at things, thus limit your research according to your own bias before you even started bringing concrete data to the table.

“Wait, I thought we agreed that our discussion is over – so I must ask, are YOU serious? And yes, I find that often, personal experience trumps theoretical claptrap. And no, I don’t need to get the last word on you, of all people, LOL.”

Then why are you replying, yet again? Because you want to have the last word. Clearly. Yes, the dicussion was over but I just wanted you to understand how brainless that last attempt of yours was. You’re a joke.

“Knowing the history of biodeterminism, I’m not naive enough to believe it will ever be completely buried. Not when even so-called black ‘afrocentric” scholars like our pal J are only too willing to bring the beast back from the grave because they fool themselves into thinking that they can ride it”.

I am afraid it is White people, who fist based their superiority on colour of skin. Then moved it to other variables like culture, religion, intelligence etc, are the ones who created this bio-determinism of ‘race’ and correlated behaviours associated with it.

This talk of ‘Whites’ being more ‘intellegent’ is just a continuation of the same, racism and White Supremacist thought, with Whites being superior over ‘everyone’ for teh past 500 years.

This is the appropriate context to place the debate about intelligence. Long before the issue of ‘biodeterminism’ arose Whites were already ‘superior’

However, since this represents part of your glorious culture and history as per your question – How do Whites separate themselves from their Whiteness??

Natasha,
You said:
“Then why are you replying, yet again? Because you want to have the last word. Clearly. Yes, the dicussion was over but I just wanted you to understand how brainless that last attempt of yours was. You’re a joke.”

O: Well, last time I heard, I had just as much a right to express my view as anyone else here, and for real, the ONLY person who really matters, is Mr. Abagond. Thus far, he hasn’t expressed a desire for me to cease and desist.

So, I suppose if you really want me to shut up, you can be so good as to lead by example.

Where are the smartest, hottest MARRIED white women with children living? I’ll give you a hint: it ain’t NYC or LA. And who are the smartest, hottest white women married to? Smart white guys (and note, as women age, they are more inclined to equate smartness with hotness in men). I don’t think this is debatable. Again, I don’t think smart white women have to be bribed (especially in the manner you described) to have children. A state sponsored eugenics program is not needed in the US. The expense associated with bearing children needs to be lowered. Racial and ethnic diversity increases the cost associated with raising white children. That is why smart white women leave places like NYC and DC when they want to have children. And children have a tendency to make smart white women more conservative. This is the point of Sailer’s essay.

Your analogy has nothing to do with genetics. You are making a case against our current system of Linnaean taxonomy. You seem to be saying that any system of categorization is arbitrary. You wrote:

nothing prevents me from arbitrarily determining that all humans around the world who have hazel eyes, black hair, a predisposition to heart disease and who are precisely 6 foot tall are a “race”.

By your line of reasoning, you could also declare all flowers with red stigma, yellow petals, that grow to precisely 6 inches and have green stems a new species of flower. But how useful would your to classifications be? Does this second analogy invalidate our current zoological classification of flora? I don’t think so because none of the previous analogies takes into account the phylogeny of organisms, i.e. descent by evolution. We don’t know how the given race/specie relate to other races/species. This is a major hole in your argument. Jared Diamond had made an argument similar to yours and his argument suffers from the same problem as yours.

As long as the ‘extended communities’ are present and functional it need not end up as ‘less stable’ asyou imply…or do you think I am barking up the wrong tree??

I think that nuclear families generally provide more stable environments for children than extended communities here in the West, even when the extended communities are functional. As I understand it, “fostering” in Africa is widespread and seems to work for Africans. Here in the West, maximum parental investment in children seems to work best, with fostering seen as the less preferred option.

Whether society decides to support extended communities depends on whether we as a society view extended communities as viable as compared to nuclear families. Just because lots of people engage in a particular form of behavior doesn’t mean it is in society’s best interest to support that behavior. I am of the opinion that American society should not support extended communities over nuclear families. I think extended communities leave children more vulnerable to abuse.

I don’t know whether familial structure in itself impacts intelligence, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Since nuclear families provide more stable environments for children, on average, than extended communities do, it seems logical that children reared in nuclear environments would be more likely to maximize their intellectual potentials than children in extended environments. I do not have any data to support this view, but it sounds right to me.

Now, in the news are two young ladies who are either getting married, or who have announced plans to get married:

Bristol Palin

and

Chelsea Clinton.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine which young lady here is more likely to have kids, RR. Already, Palin has announced plans to have more kids; Clinton, to date, has none.

Keep in mind the crucial, crucial age factor as well – Palin isn’t even 20 yet – she’s at her reproductive peak – while Clinton is into her third decade of life – for White Women, on a clear reproductive decline.

Yes, Clinton will most likely marry well, but given her own mom’s track record, it is unlikely that she’ll have many kids.

Palin, on the other hand, is very likely to follow in her mama’s footsteps, and pump out at least a few more before it’s said and done.

Palin lives in Alaska. Clinton lives in NYC. Assuming the former remains in AK, and Clinton moves to say, Chappaqua (did I spell that right?), who is more likely to have a higher standard of living insofar as raising a family is concerned?

My money’s on Clinton over Palin.

Simply put RR, and this is something I notice A LOT of HBDer type White guys simply refuse to deal with directly, is the simple fact that Smart White Women have options, and they exercise them – which means, living on the coastal cities, attending elite or near elite schools, then grad school, then wanting to experience independent living and career advancement, and of course, wanting to sexually explore their options with really hot guys, and THEN, after all that’s done, settle for Jeremy the Engineering Nerd and have, maybe, one kid at the fag end of her reproductive power and ability.

Guys like you haven’t figured out how to convince Women like Chelsea Clinton to make like Bristol Palin.

And it’s for this reason that Smart White Folk are likely to die out.

If you know anything about Game and the mating dance, it is always about what the Female wants. For Smart White Gals, they simply have better things to do with their time, lives and bodies, than to have three or four kids before the age of 25.

So long as that is the case, guys like you are demographically screwed – because even if you can get cheap housing and good schools, and you can indeed get both in flyover country America, the Smart White Gals DON’T WANT TO LIVE THERE. By and large, they want to live in or near the big coastal cities. Trust me when I tell you, Chelsea Clinton ain’t moving to Fargo, Jackson Hole, Des Moines or Austin – she’ll more than likely either remain in NYC with her new hubbie and one kid, or she’ll move out to the immediate suburbs of NYC. The only kinds of White Women who are cool with living in land-locked places like much of flyoever country, or in places like Alaska, are White Women like Bristol Palin. And by all accounts, she ain’t nowhere near as sharp as Chelsea Clinton.

So again, with all due respect, Sailer’s article is a red herring. The issue is convincing Smart White Women who matter, and who have options, to have babies when at the peak of their reproductive fitness and ability/potential, and to do it with those guys who have the most amount of raw brainpower – the Jeremys of the STEM Departments.

My plan practically addresses this, and again, we have realworld preceedent for it in the form of Yao Ming.

All decent biologists have known for quite some time that what “races” you get are a function of what and how many characteristics you pick as your defining criteria – exactly analogous to your “family of numbers” metaphor.

It is very easy to divide humanity up into races by only looking at ONE characteristic – say blood type or skin color. This is what most rational biological determinists do.

It is somewhat more difficult to do this by looking at two or three characteristics, but it can be done if one limits one’s sample population. This is what those folks who created that “black” high blood pressure medicine did: they defined black according to african ancestry within a relatively small population base: the American south and people who’ve been out of the American south for a generation or two.

But as you add characteristics, the racial definition problem increases exponentially. There are, of course, literally millions of genetically descended human traits and if we were serious about the whole “race” thing, we’d need to find some sort of congruence among ALL of these and not just a handful of traits (note to RR: “congruence” does not mean “equality”).

We don’t find that at all.

Because of this, the number and types of races among human beings ARE A DIRECT FUNCTION of what and how many physical traits one chooses to measure. This is the same thing as saying that it is US – and not mother nature – who creates races.

Races do indeed exist, then, but they are human constructs and the number and types of traits we choose to perceive as being significant for race are determined by our society’s history and our socialization.

@JI am afraid it is White people, who fist based their superiority on colour of skin.

Oh, I agree. And white people were also the first humans to build concentration camps, J. That doesn’t mean that concentration camps are inevitable or that it’s a great and mighty thing if and when people of color build them.

Racism is bad science and worse politics. Period. It does not all of a sudden become joyful and glorious and good science when black people indulge in it. You’re as big a fool as any Stormfront operative when you blather on about how “mongoloids” or “icemen” are a “natural race”, J.

However, since this represents part of your glorious culture and history as per your question – How do Whites separate themselves from their Whiteness??

First of all, by realizing that “white” is a political construct which has had only one use in human history: that of denigrating other peoples. Secondly, by realizing that even thought it’s probably an impossibility under current historical and social conditions for one to claim that one is “raceless” (without falling into the popular myth that we thus don’t have to think about race), one CAN INDEED recover the history of a certain flexibilty and of counterhegemonic means of being white or black or what have you. Blood is not politics. Being cast by others or oneself as a certain race does not mean that one must inevitably hold certain positions. One does indeed have agency in this world and one’s position within this world and ones views about it are not inscribed by fate or racial “essence” from the moment of one’s birth.

Recovering diversity and destroying the racist and facist myth that “races” or “nations” are the inevitable and only forms of human politcal life is the very best way whites can seperate themselves from whiteness.

In other words, you have no control over what others call you (“white”), but you DO have control over whether or not you believe that said label implies that you needs must take certain political or cultural positions in life (“whiteness”).

This is why I disagree with Jensen. He wants to simultaneously inscribe whites in some sort of socio-political determinism while at the same time chide them to give up “whiteness”. Our cute little self-flagelating Macon does much the same thing. Both Jensen and Macon believe in “whiteness”. They don’t like it, but they believe that it is inevitable and that it dominates their political being.

RR blathers…Your analogy has nothing to do with genetics. You are making a case against our current system of Linnaean taxonomy. You seem to be saying that any system of categorization is arbitrary.

Yes, the current Linnaean system of classification is not
a natural given. No biologist believes that. It is indeed a socio-historical construct. However, Femi doesn’t argue that we can rationally say whatever the hell we want – i.e. blue is in fact yellow. Femis is in fact arguing that even within the Linnean system, using its own criteria with regards to what is a species and a sub-species, human races don’t exist.

One could indeed line up all the characteristics of humanity and compare it to other species and it would show certain congruencies. This does not occur when we line up human characteristics. There is no set of, say, a 12 characteristics which only one sub-group of humans have and no others have. There are indeed line ups of characteristics which set humans aside as, say, mammals or primates. Characteristics which we share with all other members of the same grouping.

I think that nuclear families generally provide more stable environments for children than extended communities here in the West, even when the extended communities are functional.

Step Two
Fill in with three or four paragraphs of blather which in no way proves your hypothesis and contians little or no substantive data. Extra points if you cite a scientific paper or source which actually contradicts your hypothesis, claiming that it in fact supports it.

Step Three
Conclude by restating your hypothesis, now in axiomatic form. Rely on the fact that most people in the west have no notion how rational scientific arguments should be constructed and will thus find your rhetoric quite impressive. Use the new axiom to bootstrap up another dubious hyptohesis. As so:

Since nuclear families provide more stable environments for children, on average, than extended communities do,, it seems logical that children reared in nuclear environments would be more likely to maximize their intellectual potentials than children in extended environments.

Step Four
Repeat process until one has constructed the desired ideological structure, which one will now declare fully rational and scientific.

It’s worth pointing out that this sort of argumentation was raised to the form of a high art by Nazi propagandists.

I just lost all what I typed and not in the mood to type it all again.

Briefly I do agree with you about extended families in the West.

When I referred to ‘extended communities’, I was suggesting that uncles, aunts, cousins, very close friends etc have an input if not raising, then at least have an impact in the socialising process, rather than a single female parent isolated on her own. Personally I do not see it as leadingto child abuse.

This is what I was trying to get at. Personally I think we get too hung up on the institution of marriage, either it is created by God, or it has been ordained by society, but either way it should not change and if it does, then it is a ‘bad’ thing, and the causes of that change are deviant.

Ok. Substitute sub-species for species and my argument still holds. Whether you choose to call your designated grouping a sub-species or race is irrelevant. The salient point is that current Linnaean taxonomy is not arbitrary. It takes into account how species and sub-speices are related. It doesn’t matter what type of animal or plant is under discussion. Your example is incoherent because your are working under the assumption that evolution doesn’t matter. While our current system of racial classification is fuzzy and inexact around the edges doesn’t mean that the system of racial categorization itself is invalid or arbitrary.

You wrote:

The efforts of some to further classify humans into sub-species according to any criteria that would make biological sense have been, and predictably will be, failing.

Oh really? If racial taxonomy is failing, how is it that forensic scientists can identify the racial composition of a corpse with a high degree of probability? How is it that they are able to identify the racial composition of an alleged rapist from a semen sample?

Yes, the current Linnaean system of classification is not
a natural given.

You are not addressing my point. My point is that Linnaean taxonomy is not arbitrary. Whether or not taxonomy is a “natural given” is beside the point. Femi is, in fact, arguing that blue is yellow. There is nothing in any of the examples he has given to indicate that our current system of taxonomy is coherent. He is arguing that taxonomy is incoherent.

Femis is in fact arguing that even within the Linnean system, using its own criteria with regards to what is a species and a sub-species, human races don’t exist.

Substitute race for sub-species and the Linnean system works for humans. You and Femi seem to be under the impression that taxonomy is good enough for all fauna except humans. I am going to put to you the same question that I put to Femi, although I have presented this question to you many times in in various forms in the past and you have NEVER answered it:

If racial taxonomy is completely arbitrary, how is it that forensic scientists can identify the racial composition of a corpse with a high degree of probability? How is it that they are able to identify the racial composition of an alleged rapist from a semen sample?

If your mixed race daughter needed a bone marrow transplant and the doctor treating her excluded from consideration all of those potential donors not of mixed race (Caucasian/Negro/Indian presumably) heritage, would you object? Would you sue the people at the bone marrow registry? As you know (or perhaps don’t know) race plays a BIG part in bone marrow transplants. Why do you think that is? Please read this:

The reason that mixed-heritage patients are so hard to match can be found in the immune system.

Populations in different parts of the world developed certain proteins, or markers, that are part of the body’s natural defenses. These markers help the immune system determine which cells are foreign and should be rejected.

A match between two people who share many markers will reduce the risk of the donor and recipient cells attacking each other. Because certain markers tend to cluster in particular ethnic groups, matches are most often found among people of shared backgrounds. Multiracial patients often have uncommon profiles and a much harder time finding a donor.

About 6,000 patients in the U.S. are awaiting a bone marrow match.

Finding compatible organs for transplant is simpler. Organ matches rely essentially on blood type, which is not related to race.

I guess those people working at bone marrow registries who insist that potential donors identify their race are Nazis. Here is another article:

You’re as big a fool as any Stormfront operative when you blather on about how “mongoloids” or “icemen” are a “natural race”, J.

Whenever you type something I know you like to put in insults.

Just to say you are even a bigger fool if you believe that Stormfront operatives are going to believe in theories that tie globally White people with racism (White Supremacy), and that this is the only doctrine manifested on the earth on a global level, to the detriment of the ‘majority’.

Even here on this blog you have had problems understanding the nuance of racism, by the words you have typed on this screen.

So your reasoning in the aforesaid does not make much sense. It does if you are trying to get a cheap shot in – as perusual.

2. As for Jensen and the issue of Whiteness?? Here is an instance where your understanding of ‘race’ cterm, lets you down.

What he is suggesting in my opinion is this.

Much of White culture is based on racism etc. There are some aspects of it which are not. To give up Whiteness is to forsake the racist aspect culture but to value the non-racist aspect.

Whiteness within the last 500 years has meant the denigration of the ‘other’.

So in valuing the non-racist aspect of White culture will not necessarily lead to a ‘de-valuing’ of ‘White’. It would bring White people in line vis-a-vis POC.

And I would also say Jensen analogy can equally apply to you as an individual on this blog also.

I am aware that there is a difference between species and sub-species. Sub-species and race mean the same though. Subtitute sub-species for species in my earlier post and my argument stands. Instead of

“We don’t know how the given race/specie relate to other races/species.”

insert

“We don’t know how the given race/sub-specie relates to other races/sub-species.

into my previous post.

Please address the forensic issue that I raised:

If racial taxonomy is failing, how is it that forensic scientists can identify the racial composition of a corpse with a high degree of probability? How is it that they are able to identify the racial composition of an alleged rapist from a semen sample?

@RR
As for the “forensic probability”. First of all you are making the deterministic assumption that “race” in humans does exist biologically speaking. Secondly, if there is now a high probability to detect someone’s skin colour and perhaps even hair structure, it is because there were studies being made that focused on those traits. The results of those studies can then be used for “racial” profiling. That is because there was targeted effort being made in that direction.

If there were focused genetic studies on bone structure, hair colour and diabetes for instance you could also narrow down the number of suspects by those criteria.

What is the difference and how does that define “race”, strictly biologically speaking?

Anyway what’s the benefit for the police if the result shows that it was a light skinned male, as opposed to for instance an athletic male, with brown hair and diabetes?

I am not disputing the problem of the birth dearth among smart whites. Lower IQ whites have more children than higher IQ whites (Of course, this problem is even more pronounced among blacks). What I am disputing is your contention that high IQ white women marry and have children with people other than IQ white men. Again, a state sponsored eugenics program is not what’s needed to get smart whites to reproduce here in the US. What is needed is the elimination of the disincentives that discourage smart whites from reproducing. From my perspective, the disincentives are as follows:

1) Unrestricted immigration – This not inflates home prices (well, it did inflate home prices) but it also increases the labor pool, which lowers wages across the board. People with depressed wages have fewer children than they would have if their wages were not depressed. H1B visa holders depress engineering wages.

2) Affirmative Action – What’s the point of having smart white children if the kids can’t get into Harvard or Yale due to Affirmative Action (especially for immigrants). Please read the following:

3) Mortgage deduction – This inflates home prices, causing many young couple to postpone child-bearing.

4) Crime – This also inflates home prices by encouraging white families to move away from NAM neighborhoods and into mostly white, outrageously overpriced, mostly white enclaves with good schools.

You wrote:

Simply put RR, and this is something I notice A LOT of HBDer type White guys simply refuse to deal with directly.

and

Guys like you haven’t figured out how to convince Women like Chelsea Clinton to make like Bristol Palin.

and

So long as that is the case, guys like you are demographically screwed

Oh, I get it. You think this discussion is some sort of racial pissing match. Guys like me? I don’t think so. I am black and married with children. I think I’m set. And if disaster strikes, there is always Atlanta 🙂 . I usually refrain from divulging my race unless I feel my race is germane to the argument. But since you jumped in my face……

You are not addressing my point. My point is that Linnaean taxonomy is not arbitrary.

Since when is saying that something is a product of a given socio-historical matrix is saying that it’s arbitrary, RR?

Femi is, in fact, arguing that blue is yellow.

No, he is not. Femi is not arguing that odd numbers are in fact even numbers. What he’s arguing is that the “sets” we make of these numbers are created by us according to our needs at the time and he’s clearly situating this within a chaotic organization of sets. If Femi was arguing that all biology was in fact like this, he’d be wrong. But what he’s arguing is that human biology is, in fact, a chaotic system of sets – quite like math, as Bertrand Russel pointed out a long time ago.

You are the one who’s trying to apply this to biology at large, but Femi never did that: he restricted his argument to human biology.

Substitute race for sub-species and the Linnean system works for humans.

No, it doesn’t. What are six physical characteristics that all white people share but which are not shared as a set by any other human group? I can give you 6 characteristics that all mammals share which are not shared as a set by any other biological group.

QED, RR: the system works to classify or species, but it breaks down when it hits a chaotic set: i.e. our species’ biology. If you don’t think this is the case, it should be relatively easy for you to answer the question I pose above, shouldn’t it? 😀

If your mixed race daughter needed a bone marrow transplant and the doctor treating her excluded from consideration all of those potential donors not of mixed race (Caucasian/Negro/Indian presumably) heritage, would you object?

Yes. Do you know why? Because there is no way in brazil, absent DNA testing, for a doctor to “eyeball” a potential donor and decide whether or not they are “of mixed race”. Plenbty of people who look and classify themselves as “white” or “black” or “Indian” are, in fact, mixed race.

So what is this doctor going to use to exclude potential donors, RR? What is his “raceometer”, exactly? What methodology will he employ? 😀

Yeah, I’d sue his ass right off.

If racial taxonomy is failing, how is it that forensic scientists can identify the racial composition of a corpse with a high degree of probability? How is it that they are able to identify the racial composition of an alleged rapist from a semen sample?

In both cases because forensic scientists know that they are working within a given population and a given socio-historical background. An American forensic scientist, however, would have a hard time making this definition in Brazil because his socio-cultural identifiers won’t match up with those of the population around him. He’ll find a guy has certain physical characteristics and he’ll say “Oh, this was an African-American male”. The man’s family, hwever, might think of him as mixed or even white. It may very well be that he has “white” on his birth certificate.

So unless your forensicist were to take all this into consideration – in other words, unless he were to realize that he’s working in an environment which uses a different set of taxonomies – his classifications aren’t going to be of much use to the police. He’ll be telling everyone “look for a black man” when the witnesses will be saying they saw light brown or even white men.

Again, QED. Forensics is a practical discipline and any forencist worth his degree knows that he’s working with a given set of classifications. In other words, a forensic scientist can tell you how someone probably looked: wether or not said looks are classified as black, brown, white, red, asian, or mixed, depends quite alot on the surrounding society. Becasue forensics is a practical science, however, this problem rarely comes up because forensicists practice in a given society and tend to share the same culturally inculcated definitions as the people around them.

Want a clear example of what I’m talking about, RR? We have people here in Brazil who you’d call “black” who only have 20% African ancestry.

RR: I am not disputing the problem of the birth dearth among smart whites. Lower IQ whites have more children than higher IQ whites (Of course, this problem is even more pronounced among blacks).

O: ? Seems to me the only ones having a problem are the aforementioned Whites, LOL.

RR: What I am disputing is your contention that high IQ white women marry and have children with people other than IQ white men.

O: According to stuff like the GSS, White Males with a documented IQ over a certain threshold tend to remain bachelors and childless.

RR: Again, a state sponsored eugenics program is not what’s needed to get smart whites to reproduce here in the US. What is needed is the elimination of the disincentives that discourage smart whites from reproducing. From my perspective, the disincentives are as follows:

O: Yes, it is, because you still need to convince Smart White Women with options to start having babies at their peak reproductive years, which would be late teens to mid 20s, at the latest. Think: Bristol Palin. And you still have not addressed this. Why am I not surprised?

1) Unrestricted immigration – This not inflates home prices (well, it did inflate home prices) but it also increases the labor pool, which lowers wages across the board. People with depressed wages have fewer children than they would have if their wages were not depressed. H1B visa holders depress engineering wages.

O: High IQ Whites have very little to fear from Jose and Pedro. Try again.

2) Affirmative Action – What’s the point of having smart white children if the kids can’t get into Harvard or Yale due to Affirmative Action (especially for immigrants). Please read the following:

Simply put RR, and this is something I notice A LOT of HBDer type White guys simply refuse to deal with directly.

and

Guys like you haven’t figured out how to convince Women like Chelsea Clinton to make like Bristol Palin.

and

So long as that is the case, guys like you are demographically screwed

Oh, I get it. You think this discussion is some sort of racial pissing match. Guys like me? I don’t think so. I am black and married with children. I think I’m set. And if disaster strikes, there is always Atlanta . I usually refrain from divulging my race unless I feel my race is germane to the argument. But since you jumped in my face……

RR: My bad, I thought you were in said cohort. But my poiint still stands – it’s about giving what the Female wants, which is how it always is in the mating dance. And simply put, Smart White Women don’t want to live in landlocked, boring places, pumping out kids starting around age 20 or so. They want to live in the coastal cities, attend the best schools, then the best grad schools, then do cool and interesting stuff, including having a rich, childfree sex life with sexy and interesting guys, and then, when their bio clock is tolling loudly in their ears, settle down and have like one kid. And then they’ll want to live in the bubrs surrounding the coastal cities.

Now, RR, am I right or wrong about this – and if the latter, what evidence can you provide to the contrary?

I am not saying that children raised in extended communities are destined to be abused. What I am saying is that they are more likely to be abused in such situations than children raised in nuclear households.

The changing composition of family has negatively impacted black Americans. I don’t think I have to enumerate all of the negative statistics associated with illegitimacy here. One could argue that these extended familial structures that led to so many negative outcomes were non-functional, so that the data is skewed. I would agree with you to a certain extent, but I would argue that the malfunctions of the extended community structure is more inherent to the entity itself. It seems to me that parents are much more concerned about their children than other relatives would be. Certainly, there are parents who don’t care at all about their kids and extended family members who treat their non-nuclear charges as if they were their own, but it seems to me that parents have more invested in their children than non-parental relatives do.

Regarding the high IQ birth dearth, blacks have it much worse. The charts in the link below are from Richard Hoste who referenced a study by Gerhard Meisenberg. Now understand that Richard Hoste is not a nice man. I would lump him in with Jared Taylor. Nonetheless the charts are interesting:

The charts show that black women with an IQ of 120-130 have about 0.5 children, while black men with IQs greater than 120 father about 1.5 children. White women with IQs greater than 130 have almost as many children as white women with an IQ of 100 (~ 1.9) The same holds true for white men. IQ correlates less negatively for whites wrt fertility than it does for blacks. Whites in the US have higher fertility rates than European whites.

You wrote:

Yes, it is, because you still need to convince Smart White Women with options to start having babies at their peak reproductive years, which would be late teens to mid 20s, at the latest. Think: Bristol Palin. And you still have not addressed this. Why am I not surprised?

As I stated previously, white women of average IQ have about as many children as white women of superior IQ. I would say that Bristol Palin is of at least average IQ. 1.9 children per woman is still below replacement rate, but I am dubious that your plan would increase that rate substantially.

High IQ Whites have very little to fear from Jose and Pedro. Try again.

But in terms of wage depression, they have a lot to fear from Zao and Rahul, at least in the engineering fields.

There are at least as many GWBs getting over on legacy admits and thereby taking spots from otherwise worthy Whites as there AA admits. Try again.

It never ceases to amaze me how little blacks know about the effects of Affirmative Action. The following links shows the quantitative boost blacks get just for being black as compared to legacies:

And here is another article stating that the SAT gap between the scores of legacies compared to the average score of incoming freshman is significantly less that the gap between black scores and average freshman scores:

A recent Center For Equal Opportunity (CEO) study found that in 1999 at the University of Virginia (UV), the relative odds of a legacy applicant being admitted – controlling for test scores, rank in his or her high-school class, legacy status, and in- or out-of-state residency – was 4.3 times that of a non-legacy applicant. By comparison, the CEO reports that “the relative odds ratio of black-to-white applicants – controlling for test scores, high-school grades, legacy status, and residency – is 111 to 1. That is, a black applicant has over a hundred times better chance of admission [to UV] compared to an equally qualified white candidate.” “Of all nonacademic factors,” the researchers summarize, “race is by far the heaviest thumb on the scale.”

Housing prices are quite low in flyover country – compare home prices in Boise to Boston.

This is precisely my point. The high cost of houses in large cities has a tendency to suppress child-bearing among high IQ women who, as you point out, like to live on the coasts.

What’s the NAM population in Fargo, Butte, Des Moines or Boise? I’ll wait.

See my previous response.

I agree that smart white women are drawn to the coasts. Your plan does not seem likely to increase the birth rates among smart white women though, being that white women with average IQ have approximately the same number of children.

I remember taking an IQ test twice in my life. My dad who is Afro-Latino has 120ish IQ and my mom is Black American has an IQ that is in the 120s also.The first time I was in the 9th grade. I scored 132. I was 14 or 13 at the time. The second time I took the test, I was in my first year of university. I believe I was taking some boring psychology or human development course. The class was 60% Female/40% Male. 70% White, 30% Non-White(Black, Latino,Asian).

When we all got our scores, the professor told us to share them. So we all went around the room telling our IQ number. Most of the class scored in the 100-120 range. A couple of students were below in the 90s and there were three of us above average. As far as race goes, everything was pretty equally mixed and there was not one group dominating the other in terms of IQ.

I received a 135 and I was 18 at the time. The other two kids were both males; and they scored 130 and 132. One was a Japanese-Brazilian American( he was sexy) and the other White American. Most of the class was indifferent towards this experiment; but this one ignorant and rude Saudi guy said something really sexist/racist. He didn’t want to believe that me, a Black woman could score higher than him and he accused me of cheating and he said that ‘Black people and women are suppose to have smaller and child-like brains.’ What the hell is that suppose to mean?

I personally think that IQ has nothing to do with race. I think environmental factors in infancy and early childhood play a major role.My parents always keep a small library of books in the house. We had at least 4,000 books in our house at one point. Most of the books were about nature, animals, history, and art. My mother was a stay at home mom up until I was maybe 6 or 7. She always would read to me and my brothers when we were going to sleep and we had to do book reports every Saturday. Before I entered school my mom was my primary educator. She actually sort of home schooled me between the ages of 1-4. I learned how to write, spell, and do some simple math.

I never thought I was a Einstein or a Newton. I’m always considered the ‘smart’ one in class or among my friends. I still get bad grades sometimes, I still make grammar and spelling errors. I cannot do equations or mad scientist experiments. I can however remember fact about famous battles in history such as “Battle of the Red Cliffs” in Ancient China. I known that my ancestors the Taino people contributed many words to English and Spanish such as: Hurricane, Hammock, Canoe, Cassava, Guava, Mangrove, Savannah, Papaya, are just to name a few. I also known that 1% of the human population has one common ancestor, Genghis Khan. 🙂

RR: Regarding the high IQ birth dearth, blacks have it much worse. The charts in the link below are from Richard Hoste who referenced a study by Gerhard Meisenberg. Now understand that Richard Hoste is not a nice man. I would lump him in with Jared Taylor. Nonetheless the charts are interesting:

The charts show that black women with an IQ of 120-130 have about 0.5 children, while black men with IQs greater than 120 father about 1.5 children. White women with IQs greater than 130 have almost as many children as white women with an IQ of 100 (~ 1.9) The same holds true for white men. IQ correlates less negatively for whites wrt fertility than it does for blacks. Whites in the US have higher fertility rates than European whites.

O: Yes, that is rather interesting, and again goes to my earlier question as to whether the HBCUs or for that matter the other unis around the country with substantial Black student/grad populations, had matchmaking services and what the results of said services were, when it came to putting these putatively high IQ Black folk together. I have no idea as to whether such a thing exists but it would be fascinating to discover the result.

As for the study, I recall reading another similar study that said that high IQ Women in general had a harder time finding a mate and staying “yoked”. The study speculated as to why this was, among them extreme pickyness, but I’m not entirely sure on that front.

At any rate, it seems pretty clear, based on that study, that Black Women are once again, in a real bind. What else is new? Seems to me that my plan could be brought to bear on Smart Black folk too, hmm? 😉

You wrote:

Yes, it is, because you still need to convince Smart White Women with options to start having babies at their peak reproductive years, which would be late teens to mid 20s, at the latest. Think: Bristol Palin. And you still have not addressed this. Why am I not surprised?

RR: As I stated previously, white women of average IQ have about as many children as white women of superior IQ. I would say that Bristol Palin is of at least average IQ. 1.9 children per woman is still below replacement rate, but I am dubious that your plan would increase that rate substantially.

O: If indeed the goal is to raise the overall number of Smart White People – which would require White Women having an IQ above at least 120, having no less than two kids in their prime reproductive years, between late teens and mid 20s – then yea, my plan is indeed something to consider, because it is not likely that such a thing will just occur “naturally”. And again, Yao Ming proves that it can be done.

As for Bristol Palin, the average White IQ in this country hovers around 100. Palin comes from a family with lots of kids, no less than five. Sarah Palin’s IQ has been greatly discussed and no one argues that its higher than say, 105 or so. I think it’s safe to say that such Women are far more likely to have three or more kids than higher IQ White Women.

O: High IQ Whites have very little to fear from Jose and Pedro. Try again.

RR: But in terms of wage depression, they have a lot to fear from Zao and Rahul, at least in the engineering fields.

O: Then they should take it up with Bill Gates.

RR: There are at least as many GWBs getting over on legacy admits and thereby taking spots from otherwise worthy Whites as there AA admits. Try again.

RR: It never ceases to amaze me how little blacks know about the effects of Affirmative Action. The following links shows the quantitative boost blacks get just for being black as compared to legacies:

RR: And here is another article stating that the SAT gap between the scores of legacies compared to the average score of incoming freshman is significantly less that the gap between black scores and average freshman scores:

A recent Center For Equal Opportunity (CEO) study found that in 1999 at the University of Virginia (UV), the relative odds of a legacy applicant being admitted – controlling for test scores, rank in his or her high-school class, legacy status, and in- or out-of-state residency – was 4.3 times that of a non-legacy applicant. By comparison, the CEO reports that “the relative odds ratio of black-to-white applicants – controlling for test scores, high-school grades, legacy status, and residency – is 111 to 1. That is, a black applicant has over a hundred times better chance of admission [to UV] compared to an equally qualified white candidate.” “Of all nonacademic factors,” the researchers summarize, “race is by far the heaviest thumb on the scale.”

O: So, are we crafting public policy here on the basis of raw numbers of occurance, or, on the basis of something else?

O: Housing prices are quite low in flyover country – compare home prices in Boise to Boston.

RR: This is precisely my point. The high cost of houses in large cities has a tendency to suppress child-bearing among high IQ women who, as you point out, like to live on the coasts.

O: Yea, it proves that it is indeed possible to get relatively cheaper housing, tax rates and good public schools if one is willing to move to flyover country. So the question is, why aren’t higher IQ White Women willing to do this?

O:What’s the NAM population in Fargo, Butte, Des Moines or Boise? I’ll wait.

RR: See my previous response.

O: In did, and I ask the same question – given that these places have very low NAM populations, why aren’t Whites who have Black criminal concerns, simply moving there?

RR: I agree that smart white women are drawn to the coasts. Your plan does not seem likely to increase the birth rates among smart white women though, being that white women with average IQ have approximately the same number of children

O: Yes, but SMART WHITE folks – those having IQs say, at least two standard deviations above the norm, which is about 100 or so – are much smaller in number. In order to grow this number, a deliberate effort is needed. My plan addresses in a way that no one else has at present. And citing Yao Ming, his very existence proves, that such a thing can work.

To my knowledge, there are no university affiliated match making services, although there are many services that cater to the alumni of specific colleges, including HBCUs (e.g. http://hbculove.com/). The army seems to be one place where blacks with above average black IQs meet/mate and marry.

High IQ white women seem to have an easier time finding mates than lower IQ white women, judging from the marriage statistics. Not only do higher IQ white women (and men) marry at greater rates than lower IQ whites, the marriages tend to last longer. This does not hold true for blacks, however. IQ has a less significant effect on blacks and our inclination to marry. Is this due to the skewed sex ratio? Maybe. I found this bizarre, but logical, I guess:

One statistic that has fascinated me that I don’t have a lot of corroborating data for is that black women seem somewhat higher average IQs than black men do. Not only are their IQs higher, but the standard deviation is larger, indicating a greater degree of variability among black women wrt intelligence. This means that there are more black female geniuses than there are black male geniuses. If the goal is to increase the number of births among smart black women, perhaps the military has shown the way. The army seems to be one place where blacks with above average black IQs meet/mate and marry. Besides the army and Jack & Jill, I can’t think of any other mechanism, other than state-sponsored segregation that will increase the birth rate of black women. This seems to be a systemic problem.

You wrote:

Sarah Palin’s IQ has been greatly discussed and no one argues that its higher than say, 105 or so. I think it’s safe to say that such Women are far more likely to have three or more kids than higher IQ White Women.

It is debatable as to whether Sarah Palin’s IQ estimates are accurate. It seems to me that she is brighter than 105, but certainly not a genius.

In did, and I ask the same question – given that these places have very low NAM populations, why aren’t Whites who have Black criminal concerns, simply moving there?

They do move there. They move to places like Ann Arbor, Chicago and its suburbs, Atlanta and its suburbs etc. Basically, they move to college towns. The whites that don’t move are rich enough to isolate themselves from the negative effects of diversity.

Yes, but SMART WHITE folks – those having IQs say, at least two standard deviations above the norm, which is about 100 or so – are much smaller in number. In order to grow this number, a deliberate effort is needed.

If it weren’t for the immigration problem, the white birth dearth would not be much of a problem. A much simpler and easily implementable solution to our current dysgenic problems would be to significantly reduce the number of immigrants we let into the country and to deport all illegal immigrants currently living in the country. If we insisted on having immigration, we could be more selective about who we let in. We could only let in immigrants with IQs > 120 from countries that have been under-represented in the US of late, i.e. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Dutchmen. We wouldn’t have to turn ourselves into a human/civil rights violating Communist machine.

No one here disputes that environment influences intelligence. What is in dispute is whether there is a genetic (ie ancestral, familial, racial) influence on intelligence. There are some here, like Thaddeus, who believe that genes have nothing to do with ancestry. I, on the other hand, believe that genes are heritable and passed down through lineages (families). Do you believe in the socio-biological concept of race? Does having books make people smart or do smart people have a lot of books? You report that you were home-schooled at an early age. Do you attribute your high IQ to your early education? What of the fact that racial differences in IQ manifest themselves in children as young as 4?

Femi is arguing that numbers and people can be grouped into scientifically useless sets, which is what he did in his example. He, like Diamond, extends this argument to race as basically being a scientifically useless series of sub-sets. My argument is that our current system of taxonomy can be applied to humans in a scientifically useful manner. It is useful because, unlike Femi’s simple example, it takes into account relationships between sub-species (races). That is, current Linnaean taxonomy takes evolution (descent, ancestry, families) into account. Race, currently, is not strictly characterized by traits a given grouping possesses, but rather how those traits were passed down through the ancestry of a group. Again, you are arguing against a 19th century construction that was dispensed with a long time ago. Philippe Rushton doesn’t even argue this.

You wrote:

What are six physical characteristics that all white people share but which are not shared as a set by any other human group?

You are again engaging in the same type of sophistry that Femi is. Physical characteristics overlap among humans. There is no bright line distinguishing one group of humans from another. But physical characteristics, as expressed through genes, which are heritable, are passed down through ancestries (lineages, families, races) and occur in various populations (races and ethnic groups) non-uniformly. What you are doing now is arguing against evolution.

In reference to the bone marrow question:

Yes. Do you know why? Because there is no way in brazil, absent DNA testing, for a doctor to “eyeball” a potential donor and decide whether or not they are “of mixed race”. Plenbty of people who look and classify themselves as “white” or “black” or “Indian” are, in fact, mixed race.

I do not doubt that race is not just black or white in Brazil although the doctor’s precise perception of race would be irrelevant. All he would really need to do would be to eyeball your daughter and then find someone who matched her perceived racial characteristics. The doctor could characterize your daughter as white, but he certainly wouldn’t include you or any of your blood relations (except your other children) in the list of viable donors. The racial characterization itself wouldn’t matter. The consistency of the characterization would be critical though. That is, whatever the doctor thought of as white would have to be applied equally to every perspective donor. Ditto for every other racial category popular in Brazil (and there are a bunch of them).

Of course, finding a precise racial match for mixed race people is a problem, which was the point of the articles. But characterizing people by race cuts down the search time, which hopefully aids the patients, who often don’t have a lot of time. In addition to suing the doctor trying to save your critically ill child, would you also sue the bone marrow registries of the world that use racial information in matching recipients to prospective donors? What about the Dana Farber Institute? Would you sue them to?

A marrow or PBSC transplant requires matching tissue types between patient and donor. Because tissue type is inherited, a patient’s best chance of finding a match is with a brother or sister. Unfortunately, 70 percent of patients do not have a suitably matched donor in their family. Because tissue traits are inherited, a patient’s next best chance of finding a match is with someone of the same race or ethnicity.

You are effectively arguing that I, as a black man, should be unconcerned the paucity of Negro American bone marrow donors because race is a social construct. The folks at Dana Farber beg to differ with your unscientific opinion, as do I.

He’ll find a guy has certain physical characteristics and he’ll say “Oh, this was an African-American male”. The man’s family, hwever, might think of him as mixed or even white.

This is true, but not relevant with respect to the output of the genetic tests themselves. The results are reported in terms of racial percentages. That is, the forensic scientist would report numbers like:

It would be the job of the forensic scientist to then translate those numbers into characteristics that fit a given locale. The point here is that racial composition can be broken down very scientifically and specifically. These outputs can then be used in non-racist ways to catch criminals, prescribe to patients, and help solve difficult genealogical questions. Henry Lewis Gates used DNA testing to get a better idea of his own racial background. As it turns out, Mr. Gates is about 50% West African and 50% Northern European. I imagine these findings are completely without basis and are the result of Nazi propaganda.

No one here disputes that environment AND biology both don’t have something to do with human intelligence, RR, so please don’t use me as your strawman.

What people DO INDEED QUESTION is whether or not general I.Q. is in fact a be-all and end-all measure of human intelligence or that something as complex as human intelligence can be reified and reduced to a single number.

Another thing that I personally question is the idea that intelligence is a simple genetic trait that is easily passed along from paretn to child. The biological aspects of intelligence are probably hellishly complex and probably have multiple feedback loops with the environment, both physical and social. Thus the “good genes does it” argument is so much crap. I would also hazard a guess, based on what seems to be coming out in today’s research, that a lot of genes which contribute to intelligence are also not very eugenic in other aspects. People are remarking an awful lot lately on the linkages between certain forms of intelligence and certain forms of autism.

The main thing that people here question, however, is your completely lunatic assertion that “races” are the same thing as “families”. This is a definition of “race” which no biological scientist that I know of would sustain (and by “scientist”, I mean one who sustains said definition in a peer-reviewed text).

There are some here, like Thaddeus, who believe that genes have nothing to do with ancestry.

I think I accurately characterized your view on race. You have never disputed that intelligence is genetically influenced (others have though). But you are under the impression that genes are something other than heritable and that heritable traits are not transmitted through lineages.

Femi is arguing that numbers and people can be grouped into scientifically useless sets, which is what he did in his example. He, like Diamond, extends this argument to race as basically being a scientifically useless series of sub-sets.

First of all, I don’t think that Femi argued that such groupings are “useless”: they are, indeed, incredibly useful in a political sense which is why people like you fight tooth and nail to naturalize them.

What Femi is arguing – and again, this is specifically within the context of human biology and not biology in general – is that such groupings are not objective or based upon empirical observation of nature: they are based on our own needs. We make them.

Regarding Linnean biological groupings, again, no one is arguing that such a system is useless but yourself. What is being argued is that such a system breaksdown when one tries to apply it to intraspecies biodiversity AMONG HUMANS. It is, in fact, by using the logic of Linnaean classification that we can show that there are no human subspecies.

There is no sophistry involved in this assertion, RR. One can very easily come up with a list of six characteristics which all mammals share. There is indeed a “bright line” dividing mammasl from other creatures. All the sophistry in the world isn’t going to bet you a reptile which lactates, bears live young, has hair or fur, has warm blood, etc. etc.

But you can’t find six characteristics which similarly distinguish human subspecies. Nothing in the Linnaean system says that there NEEDS MUST be subspecies, by the way. Subspecies can only be logically distingushed if we can articulate a series of traits which all members of the subspecies share.

There are NO six physical traits which all “blacks” share, RR. There is no line, however faint, which can be clearly drawn around everyone who is called “black” and which would contain a stable set of six physical characteristics.

Biologists have TRIED to apply the Linnaean system to human biodiversity for the better part of two centuries now and have roundly FAILED to come up with anything approaching consensus as to what races – or even how many races – exist. This is because of a very simple reason: huamnity is too young a species to have developed stable and discrete subspecies. Our genetic code is too diverse and too widely spread out. The most we can say is that there are certain clinactic distributions of traits among populations, but these distibutions don’t all run in parallel fashion. The resulting populations are much too chaotic, shifting and variable to be called subspecies.

When you say “Race, currently, is not strictly characterized by traits a given grouping possesses, but rather how those traits were passed down through the ancestry of a group,” what you really are doing is completely redefining the notion of “race” in order to make it congruent with our current understanding of human biodiversity. This is ridiculous and anti-scientific, RR.

We invent new terms to signify new understandings of phenomena in science. We do not pour new wine into old bottles.

“Race” has a very specific and historical meaning in human biology and it continues to have a useful meaning in biology in general as “sub-species”. It means a coherent, stable, discrete population which is more alike unto itself than it is to other populations in its species. This does indeed occur in the natural universe, but NOT among human beings.

It seems to me that people like you and Phil Rushton are much more concerned with saving the concept of “race” in human biology than you are with actually performing science. This is because your ultimate goal is to naturalize certain social and historical inequalities and the “race” concept has given sterling service in that respect.

Your political correctness in this aspect is leading you to REVERSE scientific methodology and etymology. Instead of using perfectly adequate new terms (“clinactic distribution of genetic traits” and “populations”) to describe our new understanding of human biodiversity, you are attempting to force these understandings back into the straight-jacket of “race”.

Here’s another metaphor to illustrate what you are effectively doing:

Not so long ago, scientists believed that outer space was filled with a mysterious supstance called “aether” which, among other things, transmitted gravity and radio waves. Empirical observation destroyed all basis for belief in this “fifth element”. We now know that space is mostly a vacuum, with occasional particals floating through it. There is no “fifth element” of “aether”, as far as we can detect.

So when this new empirical data started flowing in, did physicists say “OK, it’s vaccum, but when we say ‘aether’ we really mean vacuum. Will go on calling it ‘aether’ because ‘aether’ is just such a nice word”?

No, they did not. Why? Because aether is not just a wrod: it was a label which expressed and was expressed by a whole conceptual structure regarding outer space that was PROVEN INCORRECT.

In the same way, “race”, as applied to humans in a biological sense is not just a word, free of prior meaning, which we can warp any old way we like. It is a term which was produced by and which produces an INCORRECT understanding of human biodiversity. It presumes that human beings are divided up into discrete and releatively homogenous genetic packages. This is false.

there is thus only one reason to try and recycle the “race” concept, RR, and that’s political. We thus need to ask ourselves “Well, what can ‘race’ do, politically, that our current clinactic distributive understanding of human genetics not do?”

And you know what that is, RR? Race allows one to naturalize historical and social inequalities. Let’s say that one was raised during one’s formative years in South Africa, like Phil, under the Apartheid system and has thus acquired because of this a thoroughly illogical but emotionally deep fear or mistrust of “black people”. Clinactic theory simply wouldn’t allow you to toss all “black people” into one basket and declare them to be “intellectually inferior”. Clinactic theory understands that the genes for skin color do not march hand in hand with the probably millions of genes which influence intelligence. Only by presuming that there was some sort of relatively stable “genepool” which makes up “blackness” could one make that claim. One thus NEEDS to recover race theory in order to make one’s emotional/political beliefs seem objetcively real.

Now here’s a very good example of how you fail to perceive how genetics work, RR:

I do not doubt that race is not just black or white in Brazil although the doctor’s precise perception of race would be irrelevant. All he would really need to do would be to eyeball your daughter and then find someone who matched her perceived racial characteristics.

This is completely unscientific and foolish.

Let’s say the doctor eyeballs my daughter and notes that she looks a certain way. OK, he goes out to find another person who looks a certain way. Will this person thus have my daughter’s genotype?

No.

Two people can look very much alike and have COMPLETELY different genotypes. To begin with, just because my daughter looks a certain way tells you NOTHING about her blood type, absent a blood test. It CERTAINLY doesn’t tell you anything about how likely she is to be a certain kind of bone marrow donor.

But let’s say our doctor is just as foolish and uninformed about modern genetics as you. He sees her and thinks “Well, she’s partially black and partially white, so let’s look for partially black/partially white donors to begin with.” That will cut down the numbers we’re looking for, right?

Wrong. Why? Because there is no specific bone marrow associated with “blackness”. “Black” is what we call people with a visible degree of African ancestry and Africa – as any biologist will tell you – is an incredibly genetically diverse set of human populations.

It turns out that my daughter’s “African” ancestry comes via Rio de Janeiro Brazil and the majority of this city’s African population came from 19th century Angola. That’s not going to help us in, say, New Orleans, where the majority of the African population came from around Dahomé. Worse: it could very well be that my daughter’s “black” ancestry is from Mozambique or even from the San peoples in Africa. How would you tell, simply by looking at her, if you were going on skin color, hair form, nose shape – i.e. the things that racists like yourself princiaplly look at when you classify people according to race?

It should be noted here that the snippet you copypasted also apparently has a very foggy understanding of what “race” is in biological terms. “West African” covers a huge variety of biologically diverse people, as does “Northern European”. What we properly have there are a set of populations. But your presumptive doctor would SURELY need to know, for the sake of his goal (correct bone marrow donors), whether that “West African” was Nigerian or San. The two groups are quite distinct, genetically speaking. And he’d certainly need to know as well if “Northern European” meant “Finnish” or “Saxon”.

All your snippet is telling us is that it helps to understand ancestry and human genetic biopatterning when we look for donors. That’s well and good. What it DOES NOT prove is the existence of discrete and stable subspecies. When one could just as easily say “black” or “San” or “West African” and make the same argument, but with radically differing results, then it becomes obvious that race is a function of the kind of cutting and labeling a given individual performs and not an objective, empirical phenomena which can be correctly perceived by all reasonable peoples.

So what would a REAL and RESPONSIBLE doctor do? He would try to get the best and most complete family history possible and also attempt a genetic assay. He would then look in geographic regions where that sort of genetic mixture was common. In my putative daughter’s case, that would probably mean Atlantic seaboard metropoli which have historically hosted large migration flows from southernwestern Africa and central Germany.

Races are not needed to make this determination and, given their historical scientific definition, there is a less than trivial chance that looking at a situation like this racially would result in a doctor naturalizing his prejudices.

There are some here, like Thaddeus, who believe that genes have nothing to do with ancestry.

I think I accurately characterized your view on race. You have never disputed that intelligence is genetically influenced (others have though). But you are under the impression that genes are something other than heritable and that heritable traits are not transmitted through lineages.

Wow. Either you are thus very cynical or very thick. 😀 Where have I ever said or even indicated that genes have nothing to do with ancestry?

What I HAVE said is that ancestry is not race. Get it right.

Lineages are not races, RR. Race has a very specific meaning, as I outlined above, and it is not simply “genetic descent”.

A race is like an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some extent.

This is an up-to-date definition of race.

No, that is not an up-to-date definition of race. That is a very poor metaphor constructed by a white supremacist who, as far as I know, has no substantive training in biology at all.

You will not find that definition of race in ANY biology textbook on the planet, I wager. Want to try?

Thaddeus is right. There is no scientifically peer-reviewed and accepted biological/genetic definition of “race” in humans. There were many, mostly contradictory, attempts of determining such classification but ALL of those attempts are AT THE VERY BEST controversial. Most are however outdated and/or pseudo-scientific and/or debunked.

Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as the repeatedly proven theory “the sun is a star and the earth is a planet revolving around it” in human genetics in terms of “races”. Therefore EVERYBODY has to accept the undeniable fact that this issue is AT THE VERY BEST controversial and at worst invalid, unless someone comes up with scientifically peer-reviewed and plausible EVIDENCE, including a non-arbitrary definition of “race” in humans.

As long as no theory is proven beyond any doubt, we must assume that there only exists what has been scientifically proven so far. That is, one human “race”, ie. precisely one species homo sapiens with precisely one subspecies homo sapiens sapiens currently living on planet earth. Not more, not less. Everything else belongs to the realm of social sciences.

Man I must give it to you Femi. That analogy is spot on. Human “races” much like numerical groupings are done at the discretion of those viewing the data. This is why someone who is black in the US would be considered mixed or even white in a different country.

For the record, I’m not against people like Phil searching for races. Hell, it’s a hypothesis. But extraordinary claims need extraordinary findings to back them up and nothing Rushton has turned up has been particularly convincing with regards to the existence of human subspecies.

It should also be pointed out that Rushton’s definition of race follows the old, obsolete notion of subspecies and not Steve Sailor/RR’s gloss that it’s “an extended family”.

God knows why anyone would think that a far-right film-critic cum blogger-journalist would be an authority on human biology in the first place…

Personally I would say the problem with this is the issue of ‘intelligence’ and how certain ‘forces’ within a particular society, reinforces the process(es) rather than race per se and not whether ‘races’ exists or not.

Since it is still possible for ‘those’ to say that even if races do not exist Black people are still less ‘intelligent’ than Whites, and that can be done on a ‘cultural’ basis.

You are partially right. Even assuming, wrongly, that race is a wholly social construct, people of sub-Saharan African descent still have lower average IQs than people of European descent. There would still be genetic effects to consider in addition to environmental effects.

First of all, I don’t think that Femi argued that such groupings are “useless”: they are, indeed, incredibly useful in a political sense which is why people like you fight tooth and nail to naturalize them.

I wrote:

Femi is arguing that numbers and people can be grouped into scientifically useless sets.

Race has scientific utility. As I pointed out to you before, forensic scientists, genealogists, bone marrow specialists make beneficial scientific use of race all of the time. Femi’s example was arbitrary and scientifically useless. He used the analogy to make it seem as though racial groupings were just as arbitrary and scientifically useless. He was wrong and you are wrong.

What is being argued is that such a system breaksdown when one tries to apply it to intraspecies biodiversity AMONG HUMANS.

It does not breakdown for humans. It works for human and non-human animals. That’s what makes it useful. The type of animal being categorized is irrelevant. That is the beauty of the system. It works for all flora and fauna, including humans.

There is no sophistry involved in this assertion, RR. One can very easily come up with a list of six characteristics which all mammals share.

No, you are engaging in sophistry. I would agree with you that it is easy to classify mammals. It is also very easy to classify wolves. But yet we know that there are sub-species of wolf. We know that Eurasian wolves are separate and distinct from Tundra wolves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies_of_Canis_lupus). Sure, they share the basic characteristics of wolves, but we know they are sub-species (races) because we know HOW they evolved and we know that they differ genetically. There is no bright line separating Eurasian wolves from Tundra wolves. There are no definitions of Eurasian wolves and Tundra wolves. They can mate across sub-specie lines. But yet, Eurasian wolves and Tundra wolves are distinct enough to be classified as sub-species. There is a continuum among wolves just as there is among humans. There is more genetic diversity among humans than there is among wolves, but human groups also cluster genetically according to region. The system of taxonomy works for wolves and humans.

When you say “Race, currently, is not strictly characterized by traits a given grouping possesses, but rather how those traits were passed down through the ancestry of a group,” what you really are doing is completely redefining the notion of “race” in order to make it congruent with our current understanding of human biodiversity. This is ridiculous and anti-scientific, RR.

“A race is a distinct population of humans distinguished in some way from other humans. The most widely observed races are those based on skin color, facial features, ancestry, genetics, and national origin. Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, are often controversial due to their political and sociological uses and implications.

Since the 1940s, evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential (e.g., Platonic) characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races.”

Your view is expressed here:

“Many social scientists, drawing on such biological research, believe common race definitions pertaining to humans have little taxonomic validity. They argue that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, and that the races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further maintain that race is best understood as a social construct. Some scientists have argued that this shift is motivated more by political than scientific reasons”.

Your view is not a scientific view but a political view because you don’t like the implacations of race.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Science is not static. The definition of the atom did not stop with the Greeks. It evolved over time as the methods of analysis improved. The word atom wasn’t scrapped because it is still a scientifically useful concept, even though the definition of atom has changed over time. The situation is similar with race. You are caught in the 19th century because arguments against 19th century ideas are all you can muster.

Let’s say the doctor eyeballs my daughter and notes that she looks a certain way. OK, he goes out to find another person who looks a certain way. Will this person thus have my daughter’s genotype?

No.

You are being presumptuous. The doctor might very well be spot on. Until the person in question is given a histocompatibility antigen blood test, no one can know for sure, but certainly the doctor can cut down on the number of sure genetic dead ends by excluding people of fairly unmixed race, like you, presumably. It would be foolish and dangerous for the doctor to just test people at random. This is why bone marrow registries make note of every potential donors race (and degrees of admixture).

But let’s say our doctor is just as foolish and uninformed about modern genetics as you.

Yeah. Your stupid doctor, foolish me, and those idiots at the Dana Farber Institute. After all, they only save lives at Dana Farber.

All your snippet is telling us is that it helps to understand ancestry and human genetic biopatterning when we look for donors.

BINGO! I think you are on board now. You have trouble with the word race, not the concept of race. If it will make you feel better, we can use the phrase “human genetic biopatterning as expressed in groups of humans that inbreed to a certain extend” instead of race. Welcome to the 21st century.

He would try to get the best and most complete family history possible and also attempt a genetic assay.

Getting a family history means getting a racial history. What, you say, the patient is mostly of Scottish descent with some French and Norwegian thrown in. Great! Maybe the patient is Fulani and Kalenjin. Fabulous. The doctor will strive for the tightest ethnic/racial match possible. Of course, the doctor would not only have to assay the patient genetically, but every potential donor, which would be quite time consuming and expensive.

In my putative daughter’s case, that would probably mean Atlantic seaboard metropoli which have historically hosted large migration flows from southernwestern Africa and central Germany.

Great! So your doctor (or rather, the bone marrow registry folks your doctor would no doubt refer you to) would know where to look. People of seemingly unmixed south west African descent, like Rojane Fradique or seemingly unmixed German descent, like Gizele Bündchen could be eliminated right off the bat, which cuts down the search time, which may be crucial in your daughter’s case.

I understood what you meant (I think). Even assuming race didn’t was a fallacious concept, you are saying that cultural effects would still hold and the IQ gap between whites and blacks would still exist. Is this not what you meant?

And it something I have said here many times the socio-politics behind the concept of ‘race’ being removed – when in fact it has not really changed. All we have now is a different ‘spin’ on the word.

This is taken from RR’s link, and to be honest reading that link raised greater concerns in my mind.

However, for now this is what I would like to highlight once again:

“Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with “race,” following the Second World War evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the U.S. civil rights movement and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide.”

A race is what zoologists term a variety or subdivision of a species. Each race (or variety) is characterized by a more or less distinct combination of inheritedmorphological, behavioral, physiological traits. In flowers, insects, and non-human mammals, zoologists consistently and routinely study the process of racial differentiation. Formation of a new race takes place when, over several generations, individuals in one group reproduce more frequently among themselves than they do with individuals in other groups.

Hmm. So Rushton believes that traits are inherited (passed down from generation to generation through families), and that races form over generations due to reproduction limited to members of the same group. Sounds like a large extended family to me. Notice how Rushton does NOT say that a race is defined by a limited discrete set of characteristics, which you were under the impression Rushton believed. I think Sailer and Rushton are in-sync here.

Does he? Give me his email address so I can get a good deal on the next computer I buy! The reason they read this clown is because he writes about race in a manner that bolsters their own self worth for the most part. I have read some of his articles and they read like a science fiction dime novel. I guess those who love his articles, do so, because it reconfirms their stereotypes. Stevo manages to gussy up his tripe in pseudo-intellectual words which seems to impress his minions. What was that old saying? Oh yes, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’! Too bad there is too many suckers out there. He should stick to selling computers, barring that, if he wishes to give into his more creative side, he can write articles for Mad magazine or some such satirical publication.

It is not the credential one has. It is what one knows. Thad’s main man Stephen Jay Gould was a paleontologist, but yet weighed in quite heavily on one major psychological issue….IQ. Gould had no background in psychology.

Steve Sailer graduated from Rice University with a degree in marketing. He also has a MBA from UCLA.

What I find extremely ironic about guys like Steve is that they practice what they claim “the left” preaches.

I mean, these are the sorts of guys who get bent out of shape about relativism, right? They think it`s some sort of French leftist conspiracy to destroy all that is good and worthy in the world, starting with science. And the insult that they reach for everytime they have to deal with a guy like me is “You’re just trying to confuse the issue with semantics, you no good soft-sciences lit major type, you!”

And yet, when you really look at it, it’s guys like Steve who’re desperately trying for forge counterfeit scientific creds for themselves and who use rhetoric as if it were a substitute for empirical proof.

The vast majority of empirical proof uncovered by science indicates that there is nothing remotely like subspecies in human biology. Because science is not an absolutist form of knowledge, there will always be gaps here and there that can be exploited by unscrupillous people who are more concerned with the political effects of science than science itself.

These are the Republican science pundits, for example, who scream that global warming is a hoax. It’s the born-again nutters who think evolution invalidates the Bible. And in human biology, it’s the white and other supremacists who can’t bear the thought that they are essentially the same soecies as peoples whom they hate and fear.

In other words, what Steve is trying to do is build a “politically correct” science, one that doesn’t challenge his prejudice and fears. Given that he knows very little about biology, the only way he can do that is through rhetoric.

RR, let’s just put it this way, as I think all of your so-called arguments and proof can be boiled down to this:

I asked you to give us an example of a biology textbook which understand race according to Steve Sailor’s “incestual” definition of it: i.e. “Race is an extremely extended family that interbreeds to some extent”.

You return with a definition of Phylogeny: “Phylogeny (G. phylon, a race) is equated with the evolution of species or lineages”

This is a definite “WTF?” moment for me, RR. It kind of defies logic. The fact that a term uses the Greek word for subspecies or race” is supposedly proof that “race is an extended family”?

RR, I’ve dealt with forensics and bone marrow above. Why you keep bringing them up as if nothing has been said about them is beyond me.

I know you have difficulty with reading comprehension, so let me review the points:

Forensics can only determine the “race” of a given person WITHIN a bounded socio-historical set of race defintions which are shared in common. An American forencist who applied his understanding of “black” to a Brazilian murder case is liable to confuse everyone. So as long as a forencist practices within one set of sociological givens, yes, he can determine race. An astrologer can similarly determine your astrological sign by simply looking at the objective fact of your date of birth. That classifcation, however, isn’t determined by mother nature but by a historically shaped set of sociological values. The astrologist’s codification is meaningless as soon as he steps outside that set of values.

With regards to bone marrow, no, none of those terms you’ve so far used (“French”, “West African” etc.) can tell us anything about the genetic composition of a person. Absent musch more detailed knowledge of their ancestry, such terms can do much more harm than good. A doctor CANNOT simply look at my daughter, racially classify her and then be on his marry looking for a bone marrow donor, as you say.

Regarding genealogy, I have no idea why you think this has anything to do with race, but I’m guessing it has to do with Sailor’s belief in the “incestual” definition of race.

Repeating bad theories when someone refutes them does not magically make them good, RR. So either show us how that forencist can make a cross cultural race classification, show us how a doctor can look at a child and see her genetic code, or please STFU.

It is not the credential one has. It is what one knows. Thad’s main man Stephen Jay Gould was a paleontologist, but yet weighed in quite heavily on one major psychological issue….IQ. Gould had no background in psychology.

But Gould had quite an impresive background in biology and the evolutionary sciences and everyone of those theories he trashed (and only one of the chapters was about IQ, btw) was supposedly based on “evolutionary biology”.
Furthermore, Gould did his homework by looking at the original data, its critics and its supporters. Finally, many of Gould’s articles on this topic were peer-reviewed (though MMM wasn’t).

Steve Sailer graduated from Rice University with a degree in marketing. He also has a MBA from UCLA.

None of which prepares him to even partially understand any single area of this debate.

First of all, this is pulled straight from Steve’s bunghole. It is a completely new concept of race which no biologist in the world, AFAIK, has supported or would support.

The first problem with it would be its use of the word “family”.

To start off with, Sailor bastardizes the available terminology, taking any term that fits. The term “family” itself isn’t biological but sociological. Animals don’t have families. Steve apparently means “family” in the sense of a biological lineage, but its indicative of the value of his theory as a whole that he begins by using sociological terms to talk about genetics.

But OK, let’s geve Stevie his newb dues and say that he REALLY means some sort of biological lineage. Fair enough, right?

Well, this then runs smack up into another problem: humans f*** and they f*** alot and f***ing has been known to cause children. Every time a child is conceived, all the genetic dice are rolled and an entirely new configuration comes up. And we’re talking millions of dice here, plus mutations. Plus God knows how many combinations. So when two people have a kid, they don’t just pass down a small set of traits: they pass along a freshly mixed, whopping big conglomerate of genes.

Go back a generation and each time you do, that potential mix is doubled.

Subspecies, or races, occur when a breeding population is isolated long enough that its genetic mix boils down to a fairly stable set. Humanity nowhere has been divided up long enough to do this. Even the largest geographical divides on the planet (say the Sahara desert) have not been absolute enough to keep humanity divided on an evolutionary scale.

Steve’s theory mistakes evolutionary time with historical time. He thinks four or five – or even a dozen – generations of inbreeding is enough to give one discrete and stable biological packages. That is not the case, however, except for the teensiest human populations.

Now note what kinds of “races” Steve presumes exist in the world: blacks, whites, the French, Scandanavians… These are not small, inbreeding groups but vats conglomerates.

A “family” in Steve’s sense of the world is far too small and far too transitory to be anything like a stable human subspecies.

Though RR/Steve Sailor promulgates an incredibly micro version of race (to wit, the “incest” model), it is interesting to note that none of his political pronouncements stick with that theory.

As we’ve seen here and on his blog, Steve/RR loves talking about “blacks” as if they were a race. But blacks take in such a large, dispersed and diverse population that there’s no way they could possibly be considered a “large inbred family”.

Steve thus wishes to recover race not as a theory which could actually be used scientifically, but as a political tool which can be used to whomp on groups he doesn’t like.

“Blacks” – defined as the “race” which supposedly has a biologically-derived low IQ – cannont be defined as a “big inbred family”.

It seems we are arguing in circles. You believe that human biopatterning as expressed among groups (through lineages, families) can’t be characterized as race. I believe it can. If it makes you sleep easier at night believing that race does not exist, then so be it, but you do seem to believe in the concepts represented by race. If you want to call genetically distinct groups (extended families) that inbreed to some extent something other than races, Ok.

You have admitted that:

1) Some human groups are genetically distinct from other human groups.

2) Genes are heritable and passed down through lineages (families).

3) Distinct genetic traits are maintained within groups through endogamy.

Sailer summarizes the above in his definition of race.

You have concluded that because race is scientifically inexact, it is scientifically useless. Getting back to the hypothetically situation in which your daughter is in need of a bone marrow transplant, you wrote:

A doctor CANNOT simply look at my daughter, racially classify her and then be on his marry looking for a bone marrow donor, as you say.

What I said was that a doctor can look at your daughter, conclude she is of mixed race, and eliminate from consideration potential donors who are of relatively unmixed race (which represents a significant percentage of the population of Brazil). In this, race serves a scientifically utilitarian purpose. It makes the search process more efficient. Obviously, more information is better than less information. Having your daughter’s detailed racial (familial) history would help. Of course, obtaining the detailed familial (racial) history of every potential donor would be impossible. Using race speeds the search process and, hopefully speeds treatment. This is why bone marrow registries collect racial information. This is why the people at the Dana Farber Institute collect racial information. This is why there is an effort to recruit racial minorities as bone marrow donors. Race matters scientifically. Please answer the following questions:

Do you believe the bone marrow specialists at Dana Farber are uninformed in their scientific use of race?

Do you believe the people at Dana Farber are racists?

Would you sue Dana Farber? If yes, on what grounds?

If you had to find a donor for you daughter on your own without the benefit of bone marrow registries, how would you conduct the search?

My fault, he was a marketing major. Anyways the bottom line is ,many people in the blogosphere cite Sailer as some guru about genetic differences when he is just as informed(or clueless, take your pick) as the next non-scientist.

He essentially has access to the same information as lay people. He finds statistics about social dynamics and then find a scientific study to backup his spin. An example would be Sailor’s interracial marriage articles. Truth of the matter is Sailor doesn’t have a scientific background and is writing things and coming to conclusions in a fashion much like the people commenting on this blog. He is merely a commentator, not to be confused with an expert.

Sailer is popular because he is a bright and engaging writer. His definition of race comes from what he has learned from scientists who study populations and genetics. His definition is not ground breaking, but it is very pithy. His definition is endorsed by many evolutionary biologists. Can you refute his definition?

Steve Sailor is making a very common scientific error: he is making the evidence fit his analytical term and not creating analytical terms according to the evidence.

In that Linnaean tradition that you apparently place so much store by, “race” has always meant a specific, stable inbreeding population, one which is distinct from the other groups of its species because its members are biologically more alike with each other than they are with other members of the species. Generally this occurs due to inbreeding, yes, but inbreeding which takes place over multiple tens of thousands of years.

“Lineage” is not “race” in this understanding because, of course, hybrids are the result of lineages and do not necessarily constitute a species. Not all species have subspecies, but all species have lineages. And don’t even get me started on “families”, RR, which are certainly nott a biological concept in the way you’re using it here (as a synonym for biological ancestry).

Now, this Linnean notion of “subspecies” has come under increasing fire in biology in general – and not just human biology – because it doesn’t take into consideration how genetic diversity actually works (not surprising as the concept was created some hundreds of years before we knew about genes). It has not been entirely rejected, however, because it does work for certain species. There are indeed populations on this planet which have been inbreeding amongst themselve for enough time to create a “package” of traits which are stable and distinct.

This “coherent and stable package of traits” concept is crucial to the theoretical construction of race. Race was and is meant for you to be able to CLEARLY classify a set population as distinct from another. Race is not used and is not meant to be used when such clear cut distinction isn’t possible.

Humanity has never created, anywhere in its history, clear-cut inbreeding populations on this level. In the sort of popular biological terms you love to employ, we are all mutts: we do not have stable and discrete breeding lineages which produce internally coherent populations.

This is because humanity itself is quite young as a species and has been a very successful species. Once out of Africa, we RAPIDLY colonized the entire world. in evolutionary terms, this occured in the blink of an eye: less than 50,000 years.

You and Steve Sailor are not interested in maintaing the linnean system of classification (which has its difficulties), nor are you interested in proposing a better one (which clinactic biologists are busy trying to do): your main interest is in recovering the term “race”.

A real scientist would as, as biologists have done, “Is ‘race’ really of any use in describing, given its undeniable intellectual baggage as a term which is universally understood to mean stable and coherent subspecies, which we now know don’t exist among humans?” He would be forced to conclude that “race” does not describe the chaotic mix and constantly shifting mix of human populations which, in no place, have achieved the genetic coherence and differentiation which is implied in the term “race”.

Such a person would thus say, “OK, we need a new set of clearly and carefully defined terms which can better account for the patternings in human biology. In the particular, we need to have terms which don’t imply that THIS genetic trait and THAT trait wlak hand-in-hand together in human biology”. This is what clinactic biology is doing. It understands that each trait is on a seperate cline and is distributed seperately. Being black, in other words, has NO necessary connection with having sycle cell anemia. The one does not necessarily have anything to do with each other.

You and Steve, however, are not biologists or scientists: you are political pundits intimately associated with people and groups who believe that certain branches of humanity are inherently, biologically superior to others.

A chaotic view of human genetic distribution (and please note that chaos does not necessarily mean “patternless” in modern science) deprives you of you main theoretical tool: a concept which allows you to postulate “good” and “bad” groups of human beings. If human biology doesn’t come in coherent packages, then such a belief is obviously as ridiculous as a belief in astrology or a flat Earth.

So what you’re trying to do is recover the term “race” at all costs. To do this, you engage in PRECISELY that sort of behavior that you accuse the “left” of: you toss established meaning out the window not because you have proof that it is incorrect, but because it is inconvenient. You invent new terms on the fly which promiscuously mix such concepts as “family”, “lineage”, “ethnic group” and “nation” and claim that all these are in fact simple synonyms of “race”, in spite of libraries of collected works showing and describing their differences.

You do this not because it allowws us to describe the world with greater precsion (which, I’ll remind you, is science’s only use): you do this to intentionally muddy the waters in order to save a political tool: the notion of “race” as a human biological constant.

And you’re quite right to say thatt we are talking circles around ech other, but this is because you are arguing in bad faith. You are arguing as a politician and I as a scientist.

So, for example, when I lay out WHY the practical application of forensics is not more proof of the existence of race than the practical application of astrology is proof that the stars rule our destiny, your only response is to act as if nothing has been said and repeat your original position.

This is not the behavior of one who’s involved in a rational dialogue, RR: it’s the behavior of one who professes true faith in a dogma.

As I said above, RR, the irony of this whole thing is that you and Stevie are as poltically correct as any Birkenstok-clad vegetarian earth-mother you care to name.

Sailer is popular because he is a bright and engaging writer. His definition of race comes from what he has learned from scientists who study populations and genetics. His definition is not ground breaking, but it is very pithy. His definition is endorsed by many evolutionary biologists.

Creationism is endorsed by many so-called biologists, too.

Please give us an examples of biologists who’ve claimed that Steve’s definition of race is a good one. Original sources, please, and not just names.

Better yet, show us one peer-reviewed biology text which claims that “race” and “family” are the same thing, RR.

O: Sarah Palin’s IQ has been greatly discussed and no one argues that its higher than say, 105 or so. I think it’s safe to say that such Women are far more likely to have three or more kids than higher IQ White Women.

RR: It is debatable as to whether Sarah Palin’s IQ estimates are accurate. It seems to me that she is brighter than 105, but certainly not a genius.

O: Fair enough, but it still doesn’t diminish my central point – that higher IQ folk tend to have fewer kids, and that’s regardless of the climes and times. They just do, and if you’re as familiar with psychometrics as much as I think you are, you then know well the inverse relationship between higher IQs and fertility/virility. Yes?

O: I did, and I ask the same question – given that these places have very low NAM populations, why aren’t Whites who have Black criminal concerns, simply moving there?

RR: They do move there. They move to places like Ann Arbor, Chicago and its suburbs, Atlanta and its suburbs etc. Basically, they move to college towns. The whites that don’t move are rich enough to isolate themselves from the negative effects of diversity.

O: Yes, but Fargo, Boise and Butte have university settings too, AND they have virtually non-existent NAM populations – again, something that is a concern for many of the folk we’re talking about. So again, the question stands. After all, and again, look at Sarah Palin – she lives in a state for many years that has very few if any NAMs, and she’s done quite well for herself, by any estimation. If she can do it, why can’t ostensibly cognitively superior Whites who have expressed direct concerns about NAMs?

O: Yes, but SMART WHITE folks – those having IQs say, at least two standard deviations above the norm, which is about 100 or so – are much smaller in number. In order to grow this number, a deliberate effort is needed.

RR: If it weren’t for the immigration problem, the white birth dearth would not be much of a problem. A much simpler and easily implementable solution to our current dysgenic problems would be to significantly reduce the number of immigrants we let into the country and to deport all illegal immigrants currently living in the country. If we insisted on having immigration, we could be more selective about who we let in. We could only let in immigrants with IQs > 120 from countries that have been under-represented in the US of late, i.e. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Dutchmen. We wouldn’t have to turn ourselves into a human/civil rights violating Communist machine.

O: I agree that scapegoating is always easier than actually taking a cold, hard look at oneself in the mirror. The problem with the immigration issue as it is currently understood, is that it serves two very important interests:

The Left/Dems who see in said community a burgeoning and reliable bloc of votes;

and

The Right/GOP who sees in said community a ready and CHEAP source of labor.

This latter point is hugely important, because for all the shouting being done in our time, in truth it has been past Presidents on the GOP side of the ledger who have either done nothing about the problem, or worse, have fostered “comprehensive immigration reform”. To wit: Ronald Reagan and GWB. Both parties have a vested interest in those Mexican illegals being here, and for very good reasons when one really gets honest about it – for one thing, White birth rates are indeed failing off, especially on the Left/Dem side of the ledger. Second, because nobody here, and that includes even Black Men, don’t want to do the nation’s crappiest jobs for little or nothing, like many Mexicans can and will do. Your talk about H1Bs is really beside the point, because that’s not where the action is. It’s those crappy jobs that need to be done that no one wants to do. Until we can have a brutally honest conversation about that, nothing else will change.

RR: To my knowledge, there are no university affiliated match making services, although there are many services that cater to the alumni of specific colleges, including HBCUs (e.g. http://hbculove.com/). The army seems to be one place where blacks with above average black IQs meet/mate and marry.

O: Yes, I’ve heard similar from other Black alums and the like. But it would be very interesting nonetheless to see what the actual stats say about their efforts and how successful they are in putting Black couples together from the college campus. Perhaps such infomation exists?

RR: High IQ white women seem to have an easier time finding mates than lower IQ white women, judging from the marriage statistics. Not only do higher IQ white women (and men) marry at greater rates than lower IQ whites, the marriages tend to last longer. This does not hold true for blacks, however. IQ has a less significant effect on blacks and our inclination to marry. Is this due to the skewed sex ratio? Maybe. I found this bizarre, but logical, I guess:

O: There’s a really good book I would like to recommend to you and everyone else reading along, called Promises I Can Keep. It clearly shows that poorer (and putatively) lower IQ Women have no problem finding mates or at the very least, baby daddies – what they have a problem with is finding *husbands*. So, we have to handle the above, what you said, with some care here. Yes, it is true, that higher IQ couples tend to marry more and stay together longer; but they also tend to marry later, which is a telling proxy as to the number of kids they will have, and in any event they remain smaller in overall numbers to the working class and lower cohort, which brings us back again to my Yao Ming Solution, LOL. No matter where you go, RR, there you are. 😉

As for how this whole thing shakes out wrt Black folk, I do think the skewed sex ratios play a big role. For example, right now in Abagond’s hometown of NYC, the Black Male unemployment rate is through the roof – and has been this way for decades, at least going back to the early 80s. In Harlem, where I presume Abagond lives, the current Black Male unemployment rate is 22%, or roughly one in every five Harlem Black Men; in the central Bronx, parts of Queens and the Red Hook and Park Slope sections of Brooklyn, that rate shoots up to damn near 50%(!!!) – that’s roughly HALF of ALL Black Males in said areas.

Being out of the workforce means in essense, being taken out of the serious dating pool for most Black Men, RR. You know it, I know it, and everyone reading this knows it, and does indeed have a powerful role to play in things.

And let’s not even get started on the high incarceration and homicide rates of Black Males…

I believe, first of all, that you don’t understand how or why they use race, based on your copypasta of a pop article about what they do.

Said article is a call to the general population to donate bone marrow. They are attempting to increase the biological diversity of their donor base and they are trying to get that idea across to John Q. Public who, like you, probably hasn`t cracked open a biology text since the 8th grade.

They are thus obviously going to use the term “racial and ethnic background” in this call, because this is what American laymen still understand as the key words which indicate biological diversity.

But the phrase “racial and ethnic backgrounds” – the term they actually use – is quite telling. Race and ethnicity are not the same thing: one is biological in nature and the other sociological and political.

I highly doubt that anyone at the Dana Farber institute actually thinks that categorizing people according to subspecies is the first step in finding a decent donor. What they want to look at is “background” and that is quite distinct from “race”, despite Steve Sailor’s sematic game that “lineage”, “family” and “race” are one and the same.

The rest of your questions are specious because your link does not tell us a single thing about how Dana Farber actually selects donors: it simply communicates to the general race-believeing public that they need as wide a biological base of donors as possible. This is a bit like a physicist telling a layman that a meteroite “falls to Earth” when he knows full well that in terms of physics, what really happened was that two bodies collided.

If you had to find a donor for you daughter on your own without the benefit of bone marrow registries, how would you conduct the search?

I would follow her family history and, failing that, look at populations which display similar mixes. I would not use race as a category. I would not say “Oh, my daughter’s half black and half white, so that’s where I’ll look”. My search would be much more precise than that and it’s first step would involve a genetic assay. NONE of this presumes the existence of stable, coherent and discrete human subspecies, which is the proper definition of Race.

“Sub-species, or race, has been up to now defined as a stable, congruent, coherent and discrete biological subset of a species. I declare that it no longer has this definition. I declare that race REALLY means raspberry sherbert.

Prove me wrong.

You really should accept my authority on these matters, you know, because i have an MBA and sell computers.”

I might be forgiven that I had no time to read through all the new posts which are certainly very interesting. I’d just like to add this.

As long as there is no global and commonly accepted single definition and grouping of “race in humans” which is valid throughout the entire humanity on our little planet, everybody can only conclude that such thing has no place in human biology/genetics. In order to have any credibility, the definition has to be as clear cut as : the chemical formula for water is H2O or planet earth is a sphere.

Secondly, any scientific effort in the hope to find the ultimate proof for “race” is a wasted one. Such efforts will always be biased and motivated by a questionable agenda.

EVEN IF one day commonly accepted biological evidence will be found, what would be the conclusion? That we as humans are all different? We already know that. Or that some are “less different” than others? We already know that too. Whatever it might be, it will NEVER be able to prove superiority or inferiority of one “race” over another in a global context.

I’m convinced that this sort of effort is much better invested in finding conclusions and solutions to the socially constructed plague called racism.

RR: One statistic that has fascinated me that I don’t have a lot of corroborating data for is that black women seem somewhat higher average IQs than black men do. Not only are their IQs higher, but the standard deviation is larger, indicating a greater degree of variability among black women wrt intelligence. This means that there are more black female geniuses than there are black male geniuses. If the goal is to increase the number of births among smart black women, perhaps the military has shown the way. The army seems to be one place where blacks with above average black IQs meet/mate and marry. Besides the army and Jack & Jill, I can’t think of any other mechanism, other than state-sponsored segregation that will increase the birth rate of black women. This seems to be a systemic problem.

O: Hmm. Very loaded comment! OK, let’s see if we can tease this apart…

For one thing, if what you’re saying is true, it would seem to buck the prevailing wisdom, which is that it is in the Male of the species that we see the most variation – more successes but more failures; more geniuses, but more dullards, and so on. Conventional wisdom on the matter holds that Women are more clumped in the middle of the bell curve, and indeed, there are precious few Female extremists in comparison to Males. So, if this is indeed the case it would raise some very interesting questions!

Second, I have to call into question what you’re saying above on the simple grounds that to date we haven’t seen much in the way of stand out brilliance on the part of Black Women. For example, if what you’re saying is true, we should be seeing many more equivalent examples of Jay-Z or NaS or the RZA in the Hip Hop world, and we simply don’t. Nor can we attribute this to some kind of sexism, since such artists can get ready assistance from the likes of Oprah Winfrey and others, who have gone on record against what they consider to be anti-Women lyrics of some rappers. Jay-Z didn’t have such backing when he founded Roc-A-Fella; nor did Russell Simmons when he found Def Jam Records. There is no equivalent in Black Female terms, to a DJ Premiere, or a Kanye West. There is no Black Female equivalent in recent years, to a Black Thought (Lauryn Hill is a very notable exception, but her best days are long behind her). I mean really, can we honestly say that Spindarella is on the same plane or higher, than Grandmaster Flash? The latter literally invented the cross fade function on the modern day DJing mixer, a key component of Turntablism, to say nothing of moving the ball forward on the genre by inventing scratching. What has Spindarella invented? And where are the Black Female equivalents to DJ Jazzy Jeff or DJ Cash Money, joint inventers of the Transformer scratch? Is DJ Nocera comparable to Mantronik?

If one accepts the premise that it takes considerable brainpower to create an entirely new musical artform, then the evidence as we have it, suggests strongly that your theory doesn’t wash.

And we can extend this out in other areas and genres. Zora Neale Hurston was a great writer and sociologist in her own right, but comparable to WEB DuBois? John Hope Franklin? Hmm…

Can you refute any of Sailer’s arguments? This is all that matters. Bad-mouthing the guy doesn’t undermine his definition of race:

Why? There are plenty of scientific journals, academic books, etc, which already do so. If one has a great interest in IQ, then one has access to these things. It is my contention that intelligence for the most part isn’t quantifiable. I’ve met many ‘dumb’ and gullible people of all sorts throughout my life, anyone from physicians who I have known personally, to lawyers, other professionals etc. You see their scope of learning is so concentrated on their acquiring their chosen profession, that they have, had, no time to delve into anything else. Some of them were just plain dense. Some recognized this and were remorseful as to this lack. I have also met plumbers, trades people artisans who were quite the opposite. Needless to say I was surprised because I had been been ‘brainwashed’ to think the opposite. That’s life however. What did, do, I deduce from this? Simply put, there are some ‘dumb’ people and some ‘smart’ people, it all depends on the individual. Instead of trying to figure out how intelligent people are, they should be examining why they even have a need fro such tests. What they effect is only one thing, superiority of one group over another. Besides which, there are many types of intelligence, is there a hierarchy as to which is better than the other? To much ifs, and. or buts for my comfort.

As to reading and and then rebutting anything written by Steve Sailor? Number 1: What self-respecting black person would read such tripe and take it in? Who’s going to read tomes, article and the like, telling them that basically, they are as a group, mentally retarded? Which one of these ‘researchers’, are going to decide which black person is dumb and which aren’t? Will they start quantifying which group of blacks are less retarded than others? What goal post will they use? I might be a retard in many regards but a sucker I ain’t. What tells me this man is full of sh$t, is the fact that he, like others of his ilk, seem to be fixated on black people’s sexuality, him and that other clown Phillipe Rushton. Good ol’ Phillipe, taking to task by Queens University, for going to malls and asking racialized men about their pecker size! This was all in the name of science. If I didn’t know better, this to me sounded like a pick-up line, the kind a nerd would employ. I am sure it went down well with the interviewees!

Lastly, I am not going to spend untold hours on the internet searching out information to post on this blog. The reason is twofold. I don’t have the time nor inclination to do so, as this isn’t a great area of interest to me, HBDers, that is. ‘Rebutting’ what they have to say will only give them a platform and perverse legitimacy to what they write. The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of blogs, articles etc, is testament of this. There are a lot of people out there with low self-worth who succumb to these ramblings. Instead of concentrating the cause and effect of such issues of racism and class, for example, these clowns only serve to divert attention to what really ails society. It’s easier to blame these problems on people who are, were, historically oppressed in whatever fashion. I didn’t buy into this thinking in the past, and I am not going to do so now. Lastly, okay I lied, I rather go shopping! My IQ is a thousand when it comes to that. It is unquantifiable!

To quote Isaac Asimov:

“Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”

We live in a very politically correct world. If Dana Farber could get away with not using race in scrutinizing a potential donor, they would. They use race because certain genetic markers turn up more frequently in some races/ethnicities than others. Take a look at the words they use again:

Because tissue traits are inherited, a patient’s next best chance of finding a match is with someone of the same race or ethnicity.

They are not dumbing down the issue for the supposedly stupid public. I guess they could rephrase the sentence so that it would be more to your liking, as follows:

“Because tissue traits are inherited, a patient’s next best chance of finding a match is with someone whose group biopatterning is similar to that of the bone marrow recipient.”

The meanings of the two sentences are the same, except the second is more verbose and less efficient.

What they want to look at is “background” and that is quite distinct from “race”

Ha! You are killing me! They don’t ask for the donors interests/hobbies or what they studied in college. They want racial background information because that is what they are looking for. Race is part of a donor’s background.

This is a bit like a physicist telling a layman that a meteroite “falls to Earth” when he knows full well that in terms of physics, what really happened was that two bodies collided.

No it isn’t. First of all, your analogy isn’t a question of just two bodies colliding. The physicist would tell the lay person that the meteorite was pulled toward the earth due to the force of gravity exerted by the earth on the meteorite. Lay people understand gravity as do physicists. Similarly the people at Dana Farber use race because in order to make a good match between donor and recipient, similar genetic markers must exist. These markers exist in specific racial/ethnic groups (or combinations thereof). So they use the word race because they mean the word race. The public understands this.

I would follow her family history and, failing that, look at populations which display similar mixes.

Similar mixes? You avoid using the phrase “racial mixes”, but nonetheless, mean race mix. How would you define “similar mixes”? How is a similar mix displayed? I guess you could interview potential donors and ask them about their “mix”, but how would you determine whom to interview? Would you just interview people at random in a give geographic area or would there be something in a perspective donor’s appearance that might incline you to inquire further as to that person’s “mix”?

My search would be much more precise than that and it’s first step would involve a genetic assay.

Yes, but whom would you assay? Would you assay people at random in a particular region? What would guide you in determining who was worthy of assaying? Remember, the clock would be ticking. You would have to use your time efficiently.

Said article is a call to the general population to donate bone marrow.

It is specifically a call for minority donors. And why might they need minority donors? Because they have minority patients who need very specific genetic markers in the donor in order for the transplant to work. These genetic markers are race/ethnicity specific.

Using race would allow us a greater degree of communication efficiency, for one, because we wouldn’t have to resort to using phrases like “human biopatterning expressed in groups”. A scientist could use the word race without worrying about his funding being stripped from him. It would also allow for a greater degree of intellectual inquiry than we have today. Yes, we know that racial groups differ, but we don’t know exactly why and how we differ. Perhaps, through the study of race, something could be uncovered that would lead to the improvement of Negro IQ. We will never get to such a place if we aren’t allowed to ask the right questions in the first place.

Low IQ folk didn’t always out-reproduce higher IQ folk. In fact, it has been postulated that due to the ability of higher IQ folk to acquire resources, they usually out reproduced less bright people. Greg Cochran produced a paper that asserts that high Jewish IQ was established as an outgrowth of their persecution in Europe, and inadvertantly had a eugenic effect, with more successful Jews out-reproducing less successful Jews.

The immigration problem is not a question of scape-goating. Immigrants really do lower the quality of life for Americans, especially black Americans. I would go into detail here, but abagond my yell at me and delete my comments. If you want to explore the issues Americans face regarding immigration, we can do it here:

I will say that both the Democrats and Republicans are both horrible on the issue.

I will read “Promises I Can Keep”. I still think that if we implement an immigration moratorium we would not need to resort to draconian methods to improve the standard of living in this country.

The incarceration rate of black men is a real problem, although crime has gone down as a result of it. It puts blacks in a real quandary. If we advocate for lower incarceration rates for black men, we will inevitably get more crime. If we don’t, we have fewer eligible black males around. I guess it will be party time for my sons:). I’ll just have to convince them to marry….and to marry black women….black American Christian women.

Regarding the IQ differentials between black men and black women, perhaps the standard deviations for whites just don’t hold for blacks. After all, blacks and whites are quite different on a number of measures.

Jay-Z and Nas are successful in their chosen fields, it is debatable as to whether they possess superior intelligence. Black women outnumber black men in college across the board, perhaps even in engineering programs. We won’t even mention graduate school. Then again Sailer posted this the other day:

It seems that black males get 5s on their AP Physics C exams at a ratio of 13:1 compared to black females. I’m not sure what this means. If the numbers are similar for Calculus and other technical subjects, then perhaps the IQ data is off.

I’m not sure it is reasonable to compare Dubois and Franklin to Hurston. It seems to be an oranges to apples comparison. You also have to take into account the considerable about of sexism directed at black women then, both by black men and white men.

What self-respecting black person would read such tripe and take it in?

Me.

who’s going to read tomes, article and the like, telling them that basically, they are as a group, mentally retarded?

Well, me. Retarded is a harsh word. They are saying that blacks, on average, are less intelligent than whites. I don’t like this, but after mustering all of the dispassion that I could while researching the topic, I have come to agree with them. Why we are less intelligent is a different question.

Intelligence is a very important topic. The problems associated with IQ differentials between groups is probably the biggest problem the world is currently facing. If you don’t have time to research this topic you really need to make time.

Perhaps, through the study of race, something could be uncovered that would lead to the improvement of Negro IQ. We will never get to such a place if we aren’t allowed to ask the right questions in the first place.

“The improvement of Negro IQ”?? You really are taking a piss, aren’t you?

RR,
I find your citation of “sexism” as to why there aren’t ANY Black Female equivalents to DuBois or Franklin, or John Henrick Clarke or Jay-Z, or the RZA, to be fallacious. ALL of these Men, and many, many more, have faced far and away MORE obstacles to their success, up to and including death itself. I maintain: please show me the Black Female equivalent to Louis Armstrong; the Black Female equivalent to Dizzy Gillespie, or Jimi Hendrix, or Prince? Since we’ve been discussing Hip Hop a bit (and since you have yet to offer any Black Female equivalents to the Black Male names I’ve mentioned earlier), let’s take it a step further:

There any number of postmodern Black Feminists out there who seem to have a greater interest in “critiquing” Hip Hop than they are dealing with the very real problems they have with their White “sisters”; be that as it may, can we honestly say that any one of them are comparable to “Hip Hop scholar” Michael Eric Dyson? And if we cannot, are we then to blame “sexism” for it – even when, as you pointed out above, not only are Black Women more represented on the college campus than are Black Men, but score better on standardized tests to boot? How then are we to explain this, RR?

You tell me.

You might want to checkout an interesting paper written by Prof. Roy Baumeister; I think it’s “What Good Are Men?” or something like that. Look it up on Google, shouldn’t be hard to find. In it he makes the same argument – that WHITE, privileged Women, who had plenty of time and presumably more intelligence than poor Black Men living in Jim Crow conditions, never took their musical or artistic pursuits beyond entertaining friends at dinner parties and the like; meanwhile, poor Black Men who lived under the worst of conditions, not only moved the ball forward artistically, but founded entirely new artforms of music. Again, if we can cite such a thing as one manifestation of intelligence, then I say again, that your theory leaves a heck of a lot to be desired.

As for Jay-Z, a Man who by all accounts has very little formal education of any kind, when it comes to actually making money, I would put my money on him ahead of just about every Black Female MBA out there. Quick RR, tell me – where’d Jigga get his MBA from? 😉

I’m glad you’re going to sitdown and read the book Promises I Can Keep. Really engages some of the questions we both are raising and addressing in this thread. Moreover, I’ve had the chance to chat a bit with the authors of said book, and it was quite interesting to say the least. More on that, another time.

On Black Male incarceration, please note that I took no position as to whether it was good or bad for the Black community as a whole, or for Black Women as a whole for that matter. All I’m addressing is your query as to whether skewed sex ratios play a role as to why we see what we see in the modern day Black community along dating and mating lines. The simple truth of the matter is, for whatever the reason, yes, Black Men being locked up plays a role in skewing the sex ratios. Simply put, for every Brotha in the joint, that’s one less potential eligible Brotha out there for a Sista. Same deal with the massive and longstanding unemployment problem wrt Black Men. Same deal wrt the homicde rate. And so on.

Finally, wrt immigration – so long as both political parties stand to gain substantially from such a state of affairs, NOTHING will change. Moreover, many of the issues we are discussing have very little to do with immigration, for example, the high IQ White birthrate in this country historically. It’s always been lower than their lower IQ White brethren RR, and I’ve given a clear and present example, case in point by citing Sarah Palin and her daught Bristol. There are precious few NAMs in Alaska. Same deal in Boise, Des Moines, Fargo, Butte, etc et al. Red staters, who tend to be less intelligent than their Blue state brethren, also tend to have more babies on average. And it has been thus for quite some time now.

RR,
Also, since we are examining the whys and wherefores of IQ and the like, I would like to know what you think of the notion of “Clever Sillies”. You can find the idea online, no need for me to go into it all here. My reason for asking you about this is because I think it’s something of a dangerous assumption to go “smart=good, not so smart=bad”. My experience and observation tends to turn such a notion on its head, and Clever Sillies thinking is one reason why.

I like this notion of “clever sillies”. I guess these kinds of people take IQ tests & scores seriously, and go around looking down their noses at those apparently less fortunate than themselves. I’ve questioned the scientific legitimacy of IQ tests and they’ve suggested I was intellectually envious of them (this was at a gathering of Mensa members in London’s Hyde Park). Then I showed them my IQ test scores, and they soon shut up!

The level of snobbery these people exhibit is deeply offensive, and as a Black man I know that translates to bigotry in a heartbeat.

Yeah, “clever sillies” is a good one as it suggests a group of people who simply ”cannot see the wood for the trees”; much like angry nerds who just don’t get that the highest form of human intelligence is actually intuition since it encompasses all of the senses (plus the brain), and is most potent when matched with a hungry mind that wasn’t schooled at some Ivy League college. Malcolm X anyone? Or maybe even Obsidian!

I will concede that historically there were more black male virtuosos than female virtuosos, but I maintain that the sexual gap in virtuosity is wider in whites than it is in blacks. Why is it that most of the work in Africa is done by women?

not only are Black Women more represented on the college campus than are Black Men, but score better on standardized tests to boot? How then are we to explain this, RR?

Yes, I get it. Perhaps it is something environmental. We seem to be seeing something akin to this in the white race, being that at many major campuses, white females outnumber white males (but not in the strictly technical disciplines).

Being that I’m not particularly fond of the Jigga Man, I don’t count his success as something we can be proud of. Ditto for the entire rap industry.

Perhaps men as a group are redundant. Here is a white woman with a very strong opinion on the matter:

The triumphalism of the author could only have come from a white woman.

Moreover, many of the issues we are discussing have very little to do with immigration

Virtually all of the issues we are discussing here are impacted by immigration. It bothers me that many blacks don’t get this basic fact. It seems to me that in our blind hatred of the White Man, we overlook other, more basic threats, like illegitimacy and immigration. I will address your other comments on immigration in the other thread.

the high IQ White birthrate in this country historically. It’s always been lower than their lower IQ White brethren RR

I doubt that, though it is debatable. It is hard to say whether low IQ whites were having more babies than smarter whites in 1776, 1865 or 1946. It seems to be the case that whites of average and above average IQ have approximately the same number of children in the US.

I hadn’t heard of the phrase “Clever Sillies” before, but I think I touched on it earlier. Here is a link:

So, the greater cognitive abilities of higher IQ tend also to be accompanied by a distinctive high IQ personality type including the trait of ‘Openness to experience’, ‘enlightened’ or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism.

and

And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain; this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition ‘advertising’ their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy.

The level of snobbery these people exhibit is deeply offensive, and as a Black man I know that translates to bigotry in a heartbeat.

I agree. It will be couched in terms like “Race doesn’t exist”, as if just eliminating the word race would eliminate racism. This bigotry is most evident when the topic of discussion among liberals like Hannah Rosen, is working class whites.

Brothers, may I ask you both a question? OK. Did the authors of the Bell Curve question the scientific legitimacy of IQ tests in their book? I figure the answer to this single question will in turn answer another question I have spinning around in my head.

RR: My, you feel quite strongly about this. I see your point, but it seems to me that black women had things at least as bad as black men did up until recent history.

O: No, they didn’t. Black Women weren’t lynched anywhere near the degree that Black Men were, and that’s just for starters. For more on this point, you can go look up another prominent Black Woman’s work, one Ida B. Wells, who made it her life’s work to chronicle the grisly history as it unfolded in the early part of the last century for the Crisis Magazine.

Then there was the blatant employment discrimination that Black Men faced and continues to face to this day, in comparison to Black Women; in our time the unemployment rate for the former is about 20%; for the latter, it’s about 13%. Huge difference, I’d say.

RR: I will concede that historically there were more black male virtuosos than female virtuosos, but I maintain that the sexual gap in virtuosity is wider in whites than it is in blacks. Why is it that most of the work in Africa is done by women?

O: Now you’re changing the goalposts, RR. We weren’t talking about continental laborforce participation on the part of Black Women versus Black Men, we were examining whether Black Women, in America, were indeed more intelligent than Black Men, in aggregate. I have offered numerous examples-to be frank, far more than the counter examples you’ve offered-of Black Men who often came from serious disadvantages to go on not only to achieve, but to be true trailblazers in their respective fields. Yes, Oprah Winfrey and Madame CJ Walker are to be commended, same with Toni Morrison. But that doesn’t diminish any of what I said.

Moreover, if we were talking about Handel, or Beethoven or Chopin or Mozart, all kinds of praise would be given to their smarts and raw brainpower for being able to come up with the great works of art in music they’ve given the world; but when it comes to Black Men, their creativity doesn’t have anything to do with brainpower. Hmm.

O: not only are Black Women more represented on the college campus than are Black Men, but score better on standardized tests to boot? How then are we to explain this, RR?

RR: Yes, I get it. Perhaps it is something environmental. We seem to be seeing something akin to this in the white race, being that at many major campuses, white females outnumber white males (but not in the strictly technical disciplines).

O: Indeed. Which then raises a whole heck of a lot of questions as to the validity of standardized tests among a great many things, doesn’t it?

RR: Being that I’m not particularly fond of the Jigga Man, I don’t count his success as something we can be proud of. Ditto for the entire rap industry.

O: Well, with all due respect RR, just because YOU find Hip Hop distasteful, doesn’t mean that it lacks artistic merit or cognitive brainpower to pull off, which was the point I was making in response to your arguments about Black Women in aggregate. And the record on this matter is clear, Black Men have moved the ball forward in just about every conceivable way in comparison to Black Women, and we can see this in other genres of Black music, too-Jazz, R&B, Soul, Funk, you name it. It was Black Men, not Black Women, who took things to the next level.

RR: Perhaps men as a group are redundant. Here is a white woman with a very strong opinion on the matter:

O: Bearing in mind your general dislike for Hip Hop, I must nevertheless quote the words of Chuck D: don’t believe the hype…

RR: The triumphalism of the author could only have come from a white woman.

O: Yea, I and quite a few bloggers I know have addressed her screed at some length on our respective blogs. Personally, I find her analysis, such as it is, to be wanting.

O: Moreover, many of the issues we are discussing have very little to do with immigration

RR: Virtually all of the issues we are discussing here are impacted by immigration. It bothers me that many blacks don’t get this basic fact. It seems to me that in our blind hatred of the White Man, we overlook other, more basic threats, like illegitimacy and immigration. I will address your other comments on immigration in the other thread.

O: I can’t speak for anyone else, but there is no “blind hatred” on my part for “the White Man” here. Simply noting a fact-if you’re working as an overpaid gov’t or quasi-gov’t apparatchik, or in big law, or in certain kinds of medicine, or highpowered sales or the financial sector, etc, you have little to fear from either Affirmative Action or illegal immigration. If, on the other hand you work in manufacturing or construction, or on the lower levels of civil service, etc, et al, these two forces render you particularly vulnerable.

So, for the cohort we are examining, the high IQ White set, illegal immigration is really ain’t that big a deal. Ironically enough it is a concern of more modestly intelligent Whites who have something to fear along these lines.

As for Black folks, let us also be clear, and I say as much on my recent post on the dustup between the Tea Party and the NAACP-the average rank and file Black person is indeed VERY much concerned about illegal immigration, because it has a direct impact on the longstanding Black Male unemployment problem. Every poll or survey done on this bears this out-yet, our “leaders”, like the NAACP, continues to parrot the line given them by White Leftists and the like, that illegal immigrants are being scapegoated and so on. Black folk aren’t interested in scapegoating Hispanic illegals-they’re interested in not being marginalized even more than they are in the labor market. This is yet another example of “Clever Sillies” thinking that I’ve mentioned earlier, in fact, I refer to the kinds of Blacks who wind up at the NAACP “Black Clever Sillies”.

O: the high IQ White birthrate in this country historically. It’s always been lower than their lower IQ White brethren RR

RR: I doubt that, though it is debatable. It is hard to say whether low IQ whites were having more babies than smarter whites in 1776, 1865 or 1946. It seems to be the case that whites of average and above average IQ have approximately the same number of children in the US.

O: Well, the evidence as we have it says that the higher the IQ, the less fecundity/virility present. And there have been papers and blogposts written on the matter that surveys these periods you mention above. The result? Lower IQ folk have more kids than higher IQ folk. And let’s be clear here-we’re talking about folk with IQs over say, 120 or so, versus folks with IQs anywhere below 100. At least a bit more than one standard deviation, if not two or three.

RR: I hadn’t heard of the phrase “Clever Sillies” before, but I think I touched on it earlier. Here is a link:

That is because at this point I plan to do two more posts on the book:

1. “Thomas Sowell on ‘The Bell Curve'” – Sowell is a black conservative so that should be interesting.

2. “The Bell Curve: the Argument” – based on my reading of the high-level argument of the book.

Herrnstein and Murray present the high-level argument in such a way that you can read and understand it without going through the hundreds of pages of the facts and figures and appendices they use to back it up. After reading the high-level argument I will make a decision about whether to read through all that.

MC,
As far as the authors of the Bell Curve are concerned, the best measure we have of potential life outcomes is IQ. Now of course, I have deep reservations about this. For example, Mensa is chockfull of high IQ people, but many of them are hardly masters of the universe or anything, LOL. And of course, we know that other factors-social ones-can supercede one’s IQ.
So, if you’re wanting to hear or read the authors of the Bell Curve basically questioning the validity of IQ testing and the like, get set for a big disappointment. They don’t do that. As far as they’re concerned, a big factor in life outcomes hinges on IQ, and the higher it is the greater chance your life turns out well.

The authors give a brief introduction to the history and development of IQ tests. As O pointed out, they don’t discuss in any detail the scientific validity of the tests. They focus instead on the predictive power of IQ. Contrary to the popular belief of those who have not read the book, the authors go out of their way to say that the wide range of individual human potential can’t be reduced to a number. They state:

”This identification of IQ with attractive human qualities in general is unfortunate and wrong. Statistically, there is often a modest correlation with such qualities. But modest correlations are of little use in sizing up other individuals one by one.

And

Measures of intelligence have reliable statistical relationships with important social phenomena, but they are a limited tool for deciding what to make of any given individual

Granted, there were many more black men lynched than black women, but what of rape? Black women not only had to fear being raped by white men, but by black men too. How many black men were raped? This is NOT to say that black women were raped systematically en masse by white or black men, but I’m saying that that the hardship endured by black women is comparable to that of black men.

You wrote:in our time the unemployment rate for the former is about 20%; for the latter, it’s about 13%.

But this is due mainly to the lower educational achievement of black men, not to mention the incarceration rate, etc. Affirmative Action is also a factor.

Well, with all due respect RR, just because YOU find Hip Hop distasteful, doesn’t mean that it lacks artistic merit or cognitive brainpower to pull off

I don’t find all of Rap distasteful. But is it really music? Do you really think Kanye West is the artistic equal of Louis Armstrong? Would you put Jay-Z up there with Scott Joplin?

I think that Americans of all walks of life are threatened to various degrees by immigration. And the negative effects of immigration are clearly magnified by Affirmative Action. If you are a Christian white with an IQ of below 130, you are under threat. Of course, Christian whites with IQs below 130 constitute a majority of the population, so it is a big deal.

I agree that most blacks are skeptical to downright hostile to immigration. And some blacks do scapegoat immigrants, not without some justification. The NAACP at this point in our history is NOT helping our cause. They are clearly hurting us.

Well, the evidence as we have it says that the higher the IQ, the less fecundity/virility present.

It seems there is an inverse correlation between economic development and fertility. Thus we have white women with IQs of 80 averaging less than 3 kids per woman. The averages for both low and high IQ used to be much higher, with, depending on the era, higher IQ people out-breeding lower IQ people.

RR: Granted, there were many more black men lynched than black women, but what of rape? Black women not only had to fear being raped by white men, but by black men too. How many black men were raped? This is NOT to say that black women were raped systematically en masse by white or black men, but I’m saying that that the hardship endured by black women is comparable to that of black men.

O: What about it? Was it an organized and longstanding thing, like lynching was? If so, why haven’t we heard about it, especially given the fact that Black Women are if anything, overrepresented on the college campus and academic life in comparison to Black Men? That isn’t to say that rape and other forms of sexual assault on Black Women weren’t wrong or otherwise weren’t a legitimate concern; they most certainly were. What I am saying is that for Black Women, whatever their hardships simply didn’t compare to that of Black Men, and come on RR, you know this. Name me the Black Female equivalent of Emmit Till. I’ll wait.

And again, we can take Black Women out of the mix altogether – as Prof. Baumeister clearly says in his paper, well to do WHITE WOMEN, who had plenty of free time on their hands, lived very comfortable lives and were putatively smarter than maligned Black Men, STILL couldn’t come up with original forms of music or advancing existing forms in any meaningful way; on the other hand, poor Black Men living under the worst of conditions in American life did, and this ranges from Jazz to Hip Hop and everything in between. Again, how does this square your thesis about Black Women being on average smarter than Black Men? If what you say is true, why can’t we find clear and present examples of this in just about every area of human endeavor? Why is it that if anything, it’s the reverse? What is up with that? Please explain?

RR: You wrote:
in our time the unemployment rate for the former is about 20%; for the latter, it’s about 13%.

But this is due mainly to the lower educational achievement of black men, not to mention the incarceration rate, etc. Affirmative Action is also a factor.

O: Affirmative Action to be sure, as everyone, including Black Women knows, that employers essentially get a two for one when they hire a Sista over a Brotha. This is borne out in part by the fact that even Brothas with four year degrees are STILL unemployed at a rate of two to one when compared to their White Male counterparts. So, that being the case, it kinda renders the whole “lower educational achievement” argument moot at best, because even Black Women with lesser education can still get jobs at a higher rate than Black Men – and if you want to bring up “incarceration”, again, Black Men with no record and college degrees still have a rougher go of it in the job market when compared to their Sistas. No RR, it’s the Racism, stupid, LOL. Plain and simple. Or should I say, it’s the Racialism, because it has been shown that groups can and will look out for each other before they will allow outsiders into their midst. This explains why entire industries or business or jobs have been and continue to be dominated by various ethnic groups. For example, the Irish have a veritable lock on the nation’s fire departments; Poles, certain trade unions; Italians, brick masons; Indians, motels and quickie marts; Asians, Chinese and other related Asian eateries, and so on. Black Men were prevented from building the kinds of patronage networks that makes things happen and gets Men jobs, due to longstanding Jim Crow traditions, even after they became illegal. This is why unemployment rates in Black America for Black Men continue to be skyhigh, especially when it comes to the skilled trades, firemen and the like. White Men can be incarcerated and still get good jobs that are all but out of reach for Black Men, and there have been studies done on this, RR. You think all those White guys down at the union hall have squeaky clean records, RR? Is that what you’re telling me? Come on.

O: Well, with all due respect RR, just because YOU find Hip Hop distasteful, doesn’t mean that it lacks artistic merit or cognitive brainpower to pull off

RR: I don’t find all of Rap distasteful. But is it really music? Do you really think Kanye West is the artistic equal of Louis Armstrong? Would you put Jay-Z up there with Scott Joplin?

O: Well, that’s a comfort. And yes, Hip Hop is indeed music. You’re allowing your personal bias to get in the way again, with all due respect, LOL. And I’ll say this: Grandmaster Flash is on the same plane creatively and inventively, as the White guy who invented the saxophone. J Dilla is to my mind comparable to the great Polish composer Chopin. And I’d put Mantronik up there with anything Handel’s done. To my mind, the RZA, or DJ Premiere is on a par with other classical composers, or jazz composers like Duke Ellington. Don’t take my word for any of this, take a look around on the internet and see the buzz on any of these guys and see for yourself.

RR: I think that Americans of all walks of life are threatened to various degrees by immigration. And the negative effects of immigration are clearly magnified by Affirmative Action. If you are a Christian white with an IQ of below 130, you are under threat. Of course, Christian whites with IQs below 130 constitute a majority of the population, so it is a big deal.

O: Again – if you are in a certain cohort of folk, Jose and Juan aren’t much of a threat to you, not your job or even their very presence. If on the other hand, you’re lower down on the totem pole, then yea, you’ve got something to worry about.

RR: I agree that most blacks are skeptical to downright hostile to immigration. And some blacks do scapegoat immigrants, not without some justification. The NAACP at this point in our history is NOT helping our cause. They are clearly hurting us.

O: Tru dat.

O: Well, the evidence as we have it says that the higher the IQ, the less fecundity/virility present.

RR: It seems there is an inverse correlation between economic development and fertility. Thus we have white women with IQs of 80 averaging less than 3 kids per woman. The averages for both low and high IQ used to be much higher, with, depending on the era, higher IQ people out-breeding lower IQ people.

O: Nice try RR, but the higher IQ folk have ALWAYS reproduced less than their lesser brethren, and this has been thus for quite some time historically. It’s just one of nature’s tradeoffs, and why that should be something that causes so many so much agita is something that is really beyond me.

Black men, even with college degrees, have higher levels of unemployment because we still tend to be less qualified than white men. We have a tendency to:

1) Go to less demanding institutions.
2) Major in less demanding fields.
3) Graduate (if we graduate) with lower GPAs and lower levels of work experience.
4) Have fewer personal contacts.

The above holds, to a lesser degree, for black women also as compared to black men. One could argue, as Sailer has, that women have a tendency to be more conformist than men, thus inclining them to take jobs that men would not have use for. So we see black women dominating wrt black men in occupations such as home health aide, social worker, administrative assistant as well as in occupations higher up the food chain like corporate law and accounting. I do not believe that racism accounts for the disparity in employment rates between black men and black women. I think it has much more to do with innate sex differences manifesting themselves in employment preferences.

While some white ethnic groups have carved out employment niches for themselves via trade unions, most white men today are not affiliated with unions. Most white men can’t get into unions. Remember, the only way unions can keep the wages of their members high is to restrict membership. They actively restrict management’s access to labor, this means barring the bulk of the white male population from employment via unions. Add to this the reality of waning union power over the last few decades and your argument doesn’t hold water. Sure, northeastern fire departments are dominated by the Irish, but so what? Most white men aren’t firemen, and with the economy floundering as it is, my guess is that there are going to be many fewer firemen than there are right now.

Your argument regarding the relative status of black men and women during slavery/segregation is troubling. I really don’t relish dredging up old womanist positions on this issue, but here I think they had a point. The system was not more brutal to black men than to black women. I think that what we see in, say, lynching statistics, is that men have a habit of being more challenging of established norms than women are, thus men have a tendency to come in contact with established justice systems to a greater degree than women do (even today). A male slave/sharecropper could be whipped or jailed for stealing a pig or attacking another black man in a dispute. The fact that women are less inclined to commit crimes or acts of violence does not mean that the system itself was easier on them. You asked for the black female equivalent of Emmit Till. We have to remember that, while the system of “justice” was perverse and cruel, Emmit Till did, in fact, whistle at that white woman. Again, this is not to say that he deserved to be killed for it, but white justice did have a logic to it and that logic was directed at those blacks who challenged the system. Black women less actively challenged the system. A black women could be raped, not for challenging the system, but merely for existing. This was a reality that I don’t think you have a full appreciation of.

Regarding fertility and intelligence, the jury is still out as to whether intelligence has always been negatively correlated with intelligence. A conclusion is difficult to draw because wealthy countries, with wide-ranging social safety networks, are inherently dysgenic. Poor countries are also inherently dysgenic. There seems to be a point in a countries development, assuming it actually develops, in which intelligence would have to be positively correlated with fertility.

Brothers, may I ask you both a question? Did the authors of the Bell Curve question the scientific legitimacy of IQ tests in their book?

Obsidian replied:

if you’re wanting to hear or read the authors of the Bell Curve basically questioning the validity of IQ testing and the like, get set for a big disappointment. They don’t do that.

RR replied:

The authors give a brief introduction to the history and development of IQ tests. As O pointed out, they don’t discuss in any detail the scientific validity of the tests.

Menelik replies:

just as I thought: they race through the very source of IQ scores without even so much as a nodding acknowledgement as to the controversy surrounding the scientific validity of IQ tests themselves! What gross intellectual dishonesty!

Bros. Obsidian and RR, I thank you most kindly for your answers but I think the debate you’re having stemming from IQ scores is really rather sad since, like the authors of the Bell Curve, it doesn’t question the source from whence they came. If it had done, this debate would have taken a very different turn.

Instead, you guys have played into the hands the Steve sailors, and Jamilas of this world by lending credibility (by simply not acknowledging a dubious source) to IQ scores which say an awful lot more about social class, poverty, culture, and racial privilege, than it does about group intelligence.

I can’t stop you guys debating but if you would, belatedly, take a turn towards critiquing the source, it would say much for the intellectual humility of the both of you…and quite possibly bring this debate to a rapid close, too!

I have to disagree with you regarding the alleged intellectual dishonesty of Murray and Herrnstein. I think they opted not do include a thorough discussion of the validity of IQ tests because that particular issue has been settled. There really is NO debate that IQ tests measure what we in the West associate with intelligence. The liberal advocates admit that IQ tests do, in fact, measure something that positively correlates with intellectual achievement. Even Robert Nisbett, hardly a staunch conservative, admits this.

I have to disagree with you regarding the alleged intellectual dishonesty of Murray and Herrnstein. I think they opted not do include a thorough discussion of the validity of IQ tests because that particular issue has been settled.

Menelik replies:

Bro., IQ tests are a much disputed measure of intelligence for reasons which I alluded to above. That one or more critics of these tests humbly concede some elemental use for such test takes little from their original critiques. Murray & Herrnstein produced a weighty tome in support of their hypothesis, and yet paid only a cursory acknowledgement to its basic scientific legitimacy. This is dishonest since it sought to conceal a wider debate which might have rendered their thesis redundant at source.

Your debate with Bro Obsidian leans in the direction of legitimising Murray & Herrnstein’s essential thesis. This I find disturbing. The authors are not the orthodoxy but the heretics of the field of intelligence inquiry!

The tests are only disputed in the political realm, not in the psychometric realm. Among psychologists, the validity of the tests are taken as an article of faith. At this time, most critics, not a few, concede the predicitive power of IQ tests in the area of academic achievement. Thus critics have resorted to other strategems like:

1) Expanding the definition of intelligence.
2) Denying that race exists.
3) Asserting that intelligence can be raised.
4) Insisting that intelligence differentials between groups can be blamed on cultural differences.

The major themes of TBC, i.e. IQ is positively correlated with many life outcomes and that groups of people differ in average IQ, reflects the orthodoxy of the psychological community. Again, psychologists don’t debate these ideas. They consider these topics beyond debate. Murray and Herrnsteins views are not heretical, but are disturbing nonetheless.

Murray, Herrnstein, Jensen, Flynn et al are not the heretics in this discussion.

Among psychologists, the validity of the tests are taken as an article of faith.

Menelik Charles and I were discussing why the validity of IQ tests was not examined more thorougly in TBC. I assumed your remarks were related to that topic. It appears that you are criticisizing TBC on grounds other than the assumption Murray and Herrnstein make regarding the validity of IQ tests.

My point is that the overwhelming majority of psychologists, including Kamin, accept the validity of IQ testing, which is why IQ test are in widespread use among psychologists. The validity of IQ testing is an article of faith among psychologists. Please show evidence to the contrary if you can.

I always assumed there must be something wrong with those IQ tests. An individual can be smart, average or stupid, but there is no clear explanation for different races to have different average IQs. Especially given the fat this race/group IQ can change a lot in just a few years or a decade.

I do not deny that the question , ie the validity of IQ tests, was pertinent at one time. My contention is that the question, at least among the majority of psychologists, is settled. The question of the validity of IQ test has been settled. The tests are positively correlated with academic achievement and job performance. This is not debatable.

Mira,

You are correct in stating that the cause of group differentials in average IQ are a matter of debate. The consensus opinion, among psychometricians, is that intelligence is influenced by environment and genetics. The area of debate is focused on the degree of nature/nurture involved in shaping intelligence.

Herneith,

Did you get tested at Macy’s or Saks? It has been shown that shoe fashion is the most g-loaded of the fashion questions:).

@RR: No my genius for shopping is inherent, must be something to do with being female, a natural intelligence if you will, confined to the female gender. I shop online, have the products sent to a friend in the States(free shipping), and pick it up when I go to visit them! It’s easier to compare prices on the internet! My genius is at its’ height when comparing the quality of an item, I can spot cheap crap at a glance.

Just one point the issue of ‘intelligence’ is NOT settled as you might suggest.

The subject of Psychology which is a ‘social science’ trying to emulate the ‘pure/natural’ sciences of (physiics, etc) is forever pushing forward the boundary of ‘knowledge’.

So the matter is not settled.

Then also there is an understanding of how things in the ‘academic world’ are applied to the world per se.

Just because IQs may be used in the world by some psychologists – or even the majority – does not make it ‘right’.

At very best it leads to a ‘consensus’. I would suggest it does NOT lead to a ‘paradigm’ in the sense that word where it is used within the ‘natural sciences’ (for the subject ‘Philosophy of Science’)

Kamin has also written an interesting piece on IQ and the ‘politics’ behhind it, suggesting it may be a ‘tool of oppression’ by those who devised it. This is yet another topic of discussion, perhaps for another time

And just one other thing. The ‘main issue’ for most psychologists is whether intelligence is a matter of genes (hereditary) or nuture (the social environment).

Its not really about whether what races score what on IQs. Though some psychologist do attempt to utilise it for this purpose (ie political agendas)

Why do I say this??

If intelligence is about ‘nuture’. Then any score about a races’ IQs, can be fundamentally reduced to their social/material environment. Making it impossible to say that certain ‘races’ ie genetically are less intelligent.

So this is why psychologist start from the ‘accepted belief’ (priori) that intelligence is essentially derived from genes and subsequently then set out to ‘prove’ that certain races are less intelligent.

However, these psychologists, if we speaking ‘scientifically’ have to get over a number of ‘hurdles’.

1. They should be able to show what ‘intelligence’ is?

2. Is the form of measurement ‘accurate’ and reliable?? – This is also another feature of empirical science – Menelik’s point.

3. They should be able to then demonstrate that intelligence is essentially ‘genetically’ derived, and even be able to separate and isolate the ‘social’ factors. So as to ideally suggest, what percentage is genetics and/or what percentage is social??

So there are a number of pre-cusory steps that need to be in place before we can seriously begin to discuss the issuue whether certain races are less intelligent?? This
notwithstanding the various ‘political machinations’ which affects the aforesaid (of 1,2 and 3 respectively).

For this reason much of the debate within psychology, as it relates to ‘intelligence’ is at the level of the ‘nature/nuture debate’. This is what is taught in colleges etc, well in the UK at least and NOT that some races are less intelligent than others and this has been ‘proved’ by psychology.

But even in the nature vs nurture debate, things are not clear. Measuring IQ of different races and deciding which one is the smartest doesn’t make much sense because race is not a biological fact, but a cultural construct. So, whether intelligence is genetic or not is irrelevant, because race isn’t. In other words, all somebody can do is to say “the average IQ of people who identify themselves as X is….” But that doesn’t mean much in terms of any proofs, because anybody can identify themselves any way they want.

“Measuring IQ of different races and deciding which one is the smartest doesn’t make much sense because race is not a biological fact, but a cultural construct. So, whether intelligence is genetic or not is irrelevant, because race isn’t. In other words, all somebody can do is to say “the average IQ of people who identify themselves as X is….” But that doesn’t mean much in terms of any proofs, because anybody can identify themselves any way they want”.

Firstly, with regard to these psychologists, race does exist and you can classify people accordingly. RR has shown us some of the arguments that can be utilised in this respect quite.

Secondly, from the little I know, I do not think anyone has specifically gone around the world measuring intelligence of specific races.

I think what has happened there has been tests done for various countries across the world. these results have been collected and collated, which are available to any academics, to then argue that certain races are more intelligent than others.

Within America this process has been going on much longer and according to Kamin this has been used for ‘political reasons’ from the very beginning when the first Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test were devised in that country.

As for what the IQ tests measure??Personally from the little I know, psychologists do not put a lot of emphasis on ‘intelligence’. Since there are so many different types of intelligence and how it operates on a day to day basis in ordinary daily lives.

Its obvious that no IQ tests or any other for that matter that would be able to measure so many different mental capacities within a human being.

Psychologists usually work withn the theory that there is a thing called ‘intelligence’ – even if it cannot be easily defined – and there main question is how is this variable, as difficult as it is to define, obtained by humans (ie nature/nuture debate)??

RR: Black men, even with college degrees, have higher levels of unemployment because we still tend to be less qualified than white men. We have a tendency to:

1) Go to less demanding institutions.
2) Major in less demanding fields.
3) Graduate (if we graduate) with lower GPAs and lower levels of work experience.
4) Have fewer personal contacts.

O: The only factor above that has any merit, not on the basis of any personal bias on my part, but rather on the basis of actual studies done on the matter, is item four, which I have discussed at length on my blog (“Brothaman’s Dilemma”, etc). Traditionally speaking, Black Men didn’t have the patronage networks crucial in order to make things happen on the labor market and business world. This was for several reasons, Jim Crow being among them. All the other factors you mentioned above are specious. Just sayin.

RR: The above holds, to a lesser degree, for black women also as compared to black men. One could argue, as Sailer has, that women have a tendency to be more conformist than men, thus inclining them to take jobs that men would not have use for. So we see black women dominating wrt black men in occupations such as home health aide, social worker, administrative assistant as well as in occupations higher up the food chain like corporate law and accounting. I do not believe that racism accounts for the disparity in employment rates between black men and black women. I think it has much more to do with innate sex differences manifesting themselves in employment preferences.

O: The primary reason why Black Women have moved ahead in the job market over Black Men, and here I am focusing in the professions, is simple: Affirmative Action. Hiring a Black Woman essentially killed two birds with one stone, and we all know it. The end.

RR: While some white ethnic groups have carved out employment niches for themselves via trade unions, most white men today are not affiliated with unions.

O: So what; my point was made, and you have yet to actually refute it. Instead, you attempt to shift the goalpost, which you tend to do quite a bit, I am noticing.

RR: Most white men can’t get into unions.

O: I never made the claim that most White Men were members of unions. Non-sequitur yet again. 🙂

RR: Remember, the only way unions can keep the wages of their members high is to restrict membership. They actively restrict management’s access to labor, this means barring the bulk of the white male population from employment via unions. Add to this the reality of waning union power over the last few decades and your argument doesn’t hold water. Sure, northeastern fire departments are dominated by the Irish, but so what? Most white men aren’t firemen, and with the economy floundering as it is, my guess is that there are going to be many fewer firemen than there are right now.

O: Again, so what. MY POINT was in noting that White Men had patronage networks that existes and manfiests in various ways, from the firehouses and union halls of America’s big cities, to the country club golf courses and their old boy networks. THAT was my point, and that is something Black Men by and large do not have, and haven’t had for a very long time, if ever. Patronage is a huge factor when it comes to employment. Please see Bellow, In Praise of Nepotism.

RR: Your argument regarding the relative status of black men and women during slavery/segregation is troubling. I really don’t relish dredging up old womanist positions on this issue, but here I think they had a point. The system was not more brutal to black men than to black women. I think that what we see in, say, lynching statistics, is that men have a habit of being more challenging of established norms than women are, thus men have a tendency to come in contact with established justice systems to a greater degree than women do (even today). A male slave/sharecropper could be whipped or jailed for stealing a pig or attacking another black man in a dispute. The fact that women are less inclined to commit crimes or acts of violence does not mean that the system itself was easier on them. You asked for the black female equivalent of Emmit Till. We have to remember that, while the system of “justice” was perverse and cruel, Emmit Till did, in fact, whistle at that white woman. Again, this is not to say that he deserved to be killed for it, but white justice did have a logic to it and that logic was directed at those blacks who challenged the system. Black women less actively challenged the system. A black women could be raped, not for challenging the system, but merely for existing. This was a reality that I don’t think you have a full appreciation of.

O: What i don’t think you have a full appreciation of is the fact that we don’t know, for certain, what Till did or didn’t do; *we know what he is said to have done*. And this was the predicate for many lynchings of Black Men – they supposedly did something untoward, and the ONLY witness was the White Woman who was so offended – and we now know that often, she lied.

In any event, my point is simple. The sheer numbers of Black Women being lynched and mutilated, often while still alive, pales in comparison to Black Men. In no way am I attempting to belittle rape or sexual assualt, but if we are going to make any real, serious cases as to how hard Black Women had it, we would have to ask a simple apples to apples comparison question here, and the answer is, that Black Women did not endure the brunt of racial animus in the way that Black Men did. Simple as that.

RR: Regarding fertility and intelligence, the jury is still out as to whether intelligence has always been negatively correlated with intelligence. A conclusion is difficult to draw because wealthy countries, with wide-ranging social safety networks, are inherently dysgenic. Poor countries are also inherently dysgenic. There seems to be a point in a countries development, assuming it actually develops, in which intelligence would have to be positively correlated with fertility.

O: Read your Rushton, he sums it all up very well. There is a documented inverse correlation between heightened IQ and fecundity/virility.

It is true that questions regarding the nature of intelligence have not been settled, although the validity of IQ tests in measuring what we in the West associate with intelligence, i.e. academic achievement, has been settled. The tests do correlate with academic achievement which is why the tests are used.

I seriously doubt that IQ tests were devised as tools of oppression. The study of intelligence is a valid field of endeavor. Of course, the field itself, like many others, has been used to further bigotry. This reality should not invalidate the field itself.

Intelligence, like race, is relative. What, exactly, does it mean to be intelligent? Is there some minimum threshold? Who knows? All we really need to know is that different people achieve (or don’t) intellectual and life goals with varying levels of success. Psychometricians only need to verify that the measurements they make via IQ tests are consistent, i.e. positively correlated with certain types of achievement. For instance, Murray and Herrnstein point out that when IQ is held constant, the wage gap between blacks and whites virtually disappears. IQ tests are not perfectly reliable. A person with a superior IQ is not destined to be successful and a person with a below average IQ is not fated to be a criminal, yet the trends are important. These trends are especially important in assaying the causes of inequality. How do we go about figuring out why groups differ if we dismiss a possible cause right off the bat?

The nature/nurture debate has been raging for a very long time. As you stated, scientists continue to study and debate the degree heredity and environment play in the development of cognitive function. Whether scientists know definitively the precise proportions genetics and environment influence intelligence is irrelevant to the current reality of racial difference in IQ. As the authors point out in TBC, even if it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the IQ gap is entirely environmental, it wouldn’t really matter because eliminating the gap is beyond our current capabilities. We just don’t know how to do it.

This is a reasonable question, although irrelevant wrt the racial gap in IQ. Again, we know that whatever IQ tests measure, the results correlate positively with academic achievement. This is why IQ test are used as diagnostic tools.

As you know, I strongly disagree with the assertion that race is exclusively a social construct. Calling race something other than race will not eliminate problems associated with race. Pretending that race doesn’t exist with not narrow the IQ gaps between “groups” despite the fact that people can label themselves anything they like. People, generally speaking, are pretty good at categorizing themselves racially.

Black Men didn’t have the patronage networks crucial in order to make things happen on the labor market and business world.

I understand, but patronage networks don’t just pop out of thin air. They are created by specific people to be utilized by specific people. By your line of reasoning, no immigrant group should be successful because they were all shut out of patronage networks upon arrival in the US. The reality is that blacks are just not as good as other groups in forming patronage networks.

How are the other reasons I gave for the underachievement of black men specious? You state that black women are outpacing black men in the professions due to Affirmative Action, but how do you explain the disparate rates of achievement in high school graduation rates or in incarceration rates between the sexes? Are they due to Affirmative Action too?

Your insistence on an apples-to-apples comparison of racial oppression doesn’t make any sense. You are actively belittling the way in which black women were oppressed. Clearly, lynching was oppressive to both black men and black women, regardless of the number of actual blacks lynched. Relatively few blacks of either sex were actually lynched, but the threat of lynching was pervasive and effected black women and men in equal measure. Being lynched is worse than seeing a loved one lynched, but the net effect of terror is the same. The threat of rape is similar. Your view is naïve.

Wrt IQ and fertility, recall I said that as a tribe/country develops, at some point, intelligence becomes positively correlated with fertility. As a tribe/country attains a certain level of wealth, the correlation becomes negative. My point is that just because intelligence and fertility are currently negatively correlated for a given group/country does not mean it was always so.

Do forgive me – I did not read your post addressed to me. So obviously I cannot give a response.

Its nothing to do with you personally, but out of courtesy. I thought I would inform you.

If there are any bones of contention on your part. Perhaps Menelik might be able to answer. I am sure he can, cos he is well versed, and was the first one to raise the matter of the validity of IQ test, what does it measure, and teh problems with it n the area of pschology.

O: Black Men didn’t have the patronage networks crucial in order to make things happen on the labor market and business world.

RR: I understand, but patronage networks don’t just pop out of thin air. They are created by specific people to be utilized by specific people. By your line of reasoning, no immigrant group should be successful because they were all shut out of patronage networks upon arrival in the US. The reality is that blacks are just not as good as other groups in forming patronage networks.

O: If that’s the case RR, then we as a group of Black folk might as well pack it all in, yes? Afterall, YOU’RE Black, and just because you’re smart that doesn’t necessarily follow that your progeny will be. Regression to the mean and all that.

But the historical truth of the matter is, that Black Men have been locked out and prevented from developing the kinds of networks that other ethnic Men didn’t have to deal with, even if they were treated rather harshly. For example, Asian, Irish, Italian and Jewish Males faced varying degrees of ill-treatment and even discrimination, but all of these groups were able to prevail. The huge difference though, is that none of these groups were targeted for multi-generational mistreatment and disenfranchisement the way Black Men were. All of this is easily documented, from the destruction of prominent Black businesses by aggrieved Whites, to various practices done by Whites to prevent Black Men from participating in trade unions and other jobs.

RR: How are the other reasons I gave for the underachievement of black men specious?

O: They’re specious because for some reason, you either can’t or won’t take into account the history of Slavery and Jim Crow that hit Black Men especially hard. That’s why.

RR: You state that black women are outpacing black men in the professions due to Affirmative Action, but how do you explain the disparate rates of achievement in high school graduation rates or in incarceration rates between the sexes? Are they due to Affirmative Action too?

O: Not necessarily. These events are easily explained, for example, it is a fact that schools are much more female friendly in our time to the point where even upper middle class White folks are beginning to recognize it. We also know for a fact that Black Men are given different treatment in the criminal justice system, for example, different sentencing guidelines for selling crack cocaine over powered coke. And so on.

RR: Your insistence on an apples-to-apples comparison of racial oppression doesn’t make any sense.

O: You pointing out doing a comparison in this way is what doesn’t make any sense.

RR: You are actively belittling the way in which black women were oppressed.

O: No, I’m not. I am simply saying that they were impacted and indeed treated in a way completely different from the ways Black men were impacted and treated.

RR: Clearly, lynching was oppressive to both black men and black women, regardless of the number of actual blacks lynched. Relatively few blacks of either sex were actually lynched, but the threat of lynching was pervasive and effected black women and men in equal measure. Being lynched is worse than seeing a loved one lynched, but the net effect of terror is the same. The threat of rape is similar. Your view is naïve.

O: What’s naive is the way you keep whiteknighting for Black Women who by all accounts, don’t have any trouble speaking for themselves.

RR: Wrt IQ and fertility, recall I said that as a tribe/country develops, at some point, intelligence becomes positively correlated with fertility. As a tribe/country attains a certain level of wealth, the correlation becomes negative. My point is that just because intelligence and fertility are currently negatively correlated for a given group/country does not mean it was always so.

O: Well, again, all the evidence we have points to the fact that there is an inverse correlation between IQ and fecundity/virility. Don’t like it, take it up with Jensen and Rushton.

Devastating debunking by Gould. Obviously H&M know nothing about the Flynn effect. Except that… they coined the term. Yes, the first time the “Flynn effect” is referred by this name is in the Bell Curve.